By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Oct 10 1996 (IPS)

The armed forces of Cuba and thousands of volunteers with basic training are in a state of alert to respond to a possible military attack by the United States, Chief of Staff Ulises Rosales del Toro announced here.

General Rosales del Toro said the U.S. government “has not discarded the possibility of a military attack against Cuba,” and that the armed forces and popular militias will remain on alert until the Nov. 4 U.S. elections.

Speaking Wednesday at the close of a meeting of young soldiers, Rosales said the army is prepared in case “the enemy” intends “to gain votes with a military provocation of Cuba.”

The government of Fidel Castro has never ruled out the possibility of a U.S. military attack, an element that he has also used as a political propaganda tool to unite the Cuban population.

Government officials say Cuba has a highly prepared army and thousands of volunteers with a basic level of training who can be swiftly mobilised.

The administration of Bill Clinton has stepped up “its aggression in the economic sphere,” said Rosales, “but without discarding the military option, as was recently revealed by press reports.”

The Miami daily ‘the New Herald’ recently reported that Clinton was presented with several possible reprisals — including a cruise missile attack or the bombing of a military base — when the Cuban air force shot down two small civil airplanes flown by anti-Castro activists on Feb. 24.

Pentagon officials recommended avoiding the military alternatives, according to the U.S. newspaper, due to Cuba’s response potential and the short distance between the two countries, and Clinton signed the Helms-Burton law, the only non- violent option.

Rosales predicted that the U.S. government would step up its efforts to “destroy Cuba’s social system through ideological subversion.”

The 1992 Torricelli law, a forerunner to Helms-Burton in stiffening the 35-year-old U.S. boycott of Cuba, “blatantly” outlines that aim, he said.

The Torricelli law points out two different avenues for pushing Cuba towards participative democracy: a stiffening of the economic embargo, or working with intellectuals and other members of Cuban civil society.

The Political Bureau of Cuba’s governing Communist Party stated earlier this year that the Helms-Burton law intended “to foment a climate favourable to humanitarian military action” against Cuba “under the U.N. flag, if possible, or as a unilateral U.S. decision.”

Rosales said the White House was attempting to rally its allies around U.S. efforts to oust the Cuban government.

He underlined that the widespread opposition to Helms-Burton outside the United States was a reaction against the law’s possible economic effects, and must not be interpreted as a lack of willingness to help the U.S. government in its aim.

Local authorities say the world opposition to the law basically ignores those clauses that call for a new government to be established in the Caribbean island nation.

“Cuba is facing a difficult juncture, which is becoming more and more complicated at an extraordinary speed,” Rosales added.

The European Union is particularly opposed to a clause which stipulates that former owners of U.S. property expropriated by the Cuban government after the 1959 revolution can take legal action in U.S. courts against individuals or businesses — including foreigners — that “traffick” in such property.

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