CUBA: Government Calls Report on ‘Airplane Crisis’ U.S. Defeat

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Jun 28 1996 (IPS) - A decision by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) not to slap sanctions on Cuba for the shooting down of two small aircraft flown by members of the Cuban exile community was interpreted by local officials as a blow to the United States.

The so-called “airplane crisis”, which triggered a new U.S.- Cuban conflict in February, could have led to the proposal of international sanctions on the Caribbean island nation by the United Nations Security Council.

According to Cuba’s official National Information Agency (AIN), the decision approved by consensus on Thursday by the ICAO council – a U.N. agency – took note of the report on the investigation carried out, without accusing Cuba.

The official press in Cuba interpreted the conclusions of the ICAO council, which did not condemn the Feb. 24 shooting down of the two “Brothers to the Rescue” airplanes, more as a defeat for the United States than a victory for Cuba.

The ICAO investigation, ordered by the U.N. Security Council, was to determine whether the planes were shot down in or outside of Cuban territory, and whether Cuba was within its rights by shooting down two aircraft with civilian registration.

“The United States was unable to impose on the ICAO” a condemnation of Cuba, said the AIN.

The document approved by the ICAO reaffirmed the principle that each State must take measures to prohibit the use of civilian aircraft registered in its territory for any purpose incompatible with the convention on international civil aviation.

“The reference is an implicit censure of U.S. responsibility in the activity of groups based in their territory and implicated in the violation of the island’s air space,” said Cuba’s ‘Prensa Latina’ press agency.

Ricardo Alarcon, the president of the Cuban parliament and the head of the Cuban delegation to the ICAO meeting, said the “very important” results were achieved thanks to “the firm position held by several countries.

“The members of the U.N. Security Council will have before them a concrete situation: the United States asked for a condemnation of Cuba by the ICAO, and failed to get it,” Alarcon said in a press conference in Montreal, Canada.

Considered the Cuban government’s top authority in relations with the United States, Alarcon launched a heated campaign last week against what he called “U.S. manipulations” of the final report of the ICAO.

Contacts between ICAO experts and high-ranking U.S. officials when the council was postponed were termed “suspicious” by local authorities.

Cuba accused the investigatory commission of having accepted recordings that were not originals and documents provided by the United States as evidence, without carrying out the due investigation of the people involved.

The Cuban government had asked the ICAO to postpone the discussion of the report, which it argued was full of gaps, imprecisions and irregularities making it unobjective and biased.

On Jun. 25, Cuba told the U.N. Security Council and General Assembly that impunity with respect to violations of the country’s airspace would be encouraged or hampered according to the conclusions of the ICAO.

The report, to which IPS had access, leans toward the U.S. version of the February incident, according to which the aircraft used by the organisation “Brothers to the Rescue” were shot down outside of Cuba’s territorial waters.

But according to official sources in Cuba, the final resolution of the council asks States to keep from using arms against aircraft in flight, without condemning the February incident.

Furthermore, “the ICAO decision includes a clear rejection of the use of civil aircraft for other kinds of activities,” said Alarcon, referring to the flights of Brothers to the Rescue.

Nevertheless, experts consulted by IPS were cautious, preferring to wait for the U.S. reaction, and for new incursions into Cuban territory announced for Jul. 13 by the Cuban immigrant community in Miami.

Created early this decade as a humanitarian organisation to rescue Cuban “rafters” – people seeking to reach U.S. coasts on precarious watercraft – at sea, Brothers to the Rescue reoriented its activities when Cuba and the United States signed an immigration accord on May 2, 1995 that put an end to the rafters crisis.

The accord, which provides for the repatriation of any Cuban caught trying to enter the United States without a visa, led Brothers to the Rescue and other Cuban immigrant organisations in the United States to call for “civil disobedience.”

In accordance with the new policy, headed by the Florida-based ‘Democratic Movement’, fleets of air- and watercraft approach Cuba to protest against the government of Fidel Castro.