CUBA-U.N.: Washington Backs Off as Sanctions Threat Withers

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 2 1996 (IPS) - When Cuba shot down two U.S. civilian planes last Feb 24, the United States demanded immediate action, while Cuba asked for more time to determine the facts behind the case. Now, the shoe is on the other foot.

Following recommendations by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) last week stemming from a study of the shootdown, Cuban officials are asking the U.N. Security Council to respond immediately. But now, the United States is saying it will be at least a week before the Council takes up the issue.

Ultimately, says Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada, speaker of the Cuban National Assembly, the delays now mean that the threat of U.N. penalties against Cuba for the shootdown has faded.

“If the United States were really serious about the likelihood of sanctions, the (Security Council) would have met already,” Alarcon told IPS. But he noted that, four days after the ICAO Council in Montreal delivered a mixed verdict on the incident, the United Nations is in no rush to discuss the matter.

Now, he argued, it is Cuba that is encouraging the Security Council to meet its own guidelines last February to consider the ICAO’s findings “without delay.”

At the time the Security Council proposed that it would convene without delay once the ICAO ruled on the shootdown, Washington had been confident that the incident could be used to isolate Havana, already the target of a 34-year U.S. embargo.

U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright then accused Havana of “cold-blooded murder” for shooting down two planes belonging to ‘Brothers to the Rescue’, a Cuban-American group opposed to President Fidel Castro. Four Cuban Americans were killed in the incident.

Since February, the U.S. case has actually been strengthened by some ICAO findings. On the one hand, the U.N. aviation agency agreed that the planes were shot down over international waters — not, as Havana insisted, over Cuban airspace. And the ICAO also agreed with U.S. reports that the Cuban MiG-24 jets gave the U.S. Cessna planes insufficient warning before opening fire.

“We are obviously pleased that the ICAO report confirmed two of our basic premises,” a senior U.S. official said.

Yet that official added that the Security Council would not bring up the matter until next week at the earliest — an unusual delay for a topic that so interests the United States, which holds veto power on the Council.

U.N. spokeswoman Sylvana Foa said the delay is partly because of the need to translate the ICAO report and recommendations into Chinese. The Montreal-based ICAO, she said, does not include Chinese as one of its working languages, but U.N. rules require Council documents to be translated into all five working languages (the others are English, French, Spanish and Russian) before any action is taken.

Alarcon takes that explanation with a grain of salt.

The real reason for the delay, contended Alarcon, is that the ICAO Council delivered a decidedly mixed verdict in Montreal last week. Although the Council admonished nations not to shoot civilian planes, the body also “recognised there were many previous violations of Cuban airspace” by U.S. exile groups, Alarcon said.

The ICAO also noted that Washington did not deliver information it had been requested to provide on the shootdown, including recorded tapes purportedly containing the conversations of the Cuban pilots and ground control as the planes were downed.

The shootdown aftermath thus now puts Washington into a ticklish position. Unable to secure quick sanctions against Havana in February, U.S. diplomats would now be obliged to accept the findings by a U.N. body that place some blame on Cuban exile groups.

In an election year where the influence of rightist Cuban American groups looms large, especially in Florida and New Jersey, President Bill Clinton is unlikely to want to get drawn into a debate on what those groups can and cannot do. Nor is Cuba making the matter any easier by demanding that the United Nations intervene to prevent Brothers to the Rescue and other groups from flying into Cuban territory this July 13.

The bottom line, as one Council diplomat told IPS, is that Cuba is in no threat of sanctions for now. Alarcon, however, is lobbying Council members to ensure that the matter does reach the Council’s agenda soon — even as Washington decides to let the matter drop for the time being.