CUBA-US: Graham Amendment Heightens Tension

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Nov 12 1997 (IPS) - A bill in the US Congress awaiting the signature of President Bill Clinton will add a new military element to the already tense relations between Havana and Washington.

The Graham Amendment, named after Democratic Senator Robert Graham, has been approved by both houses of Congress as part of the 1998 defence budget.

The bill, which describes Cuba as a threat to U.S. security, has been interpreted by the government here as “a dangerous military threat” against the Caribbean island nation.

‘Granma’, the official publication of Cuba’s governing Communist Party, said Wednesday that the Amendment made “the military threat against Cuba so clear that under no circumstances can it be ignored by our nation.”

Local authorities warn that its implications go beyond Cuba’s borders, and insist that it be seen as a “top priority concern” in Latin America.

“Do not forget that the United States already ‘certifies’ which countries in the area behaved poorly or well in the fight against drug trafficking,” and that every year “it judges human rights records in Latin America and the rest of the world,” Granma adds.

According to reports here, the Graham Amendment requires that US Secretary of Defence William Cohen submit to Congress a formal assessment of Cuba’s military capabilities, as well as the threats it poses to U.S. national security by March 30. He would also be required to certify that contingency plans had been drawn up to deal with these threats.

“The extent of the irrational, primitive and insolent substance of the Graham Amendment is demonstrated by its claim that hostility towards the United States is the main pillar of the revolution,” Granma asserts.

Cuba’s reaction to the bill comes on the heels of a diplomatic row triggered last week by the trial in Havana of a US citizen accused of attempting to incite an armed uprising against the government of Fidel Castro. His conviction could result in a 20- year prison sentence.

The case of Walter Van der Veer, a former military officer in his fifties, has given rise to mudslinging between Havana and Washington regarding the independence and integrity of the two countries’ judicial systems.

The Van der Veer case and the Graham Amendment are only the latest in a long list of thorny matters aggravating tension between the two countries. An incident in early 1996 put an end to a tentative detente between Havana and Washington. In February of that year, the Cuban air force shot down two small civilian aircraft flown by members of the Miami-based Cuban exile group ‘Brothers to the Rescue’. Havana claimed that the planes violated Cuban air space.

The fatal shootdown resulted in the immediate and overwhelming passage by the US Congress of the Helms-Burton Act, which stiffens the 36-year trade embargo against Cuba.

The law, which has drawn protests from Washington’s closest allies in Europe, North America and elsewhere, imposes sanctions against foreign companies or individuals who gain an interest in property expropriated by the Cuban government from U.S. owners since the 1959 revolution.

Granma maintains that the Graham Amendment presents Cuba as a threat to US national security in order to add military intimidation to the “economic and ideological war” Washington has been waging against Cuba. At the same time, the newspaper noted, that, since the early 1990s, Pentagon studies have suggested that the US should seek ways of easing tension between the two countries.

“In Cuba there is no nuclear Chernobyl in spite of claims by alarmists in the United States,” retired vice-admiral Eugene Carroll said in Washington earlier this week after a visit to Cuba.

The construction of a nuclear plant with Russian technology in Cuba has been cited by US national security officials as one of the main “threats to U.S. security” posed by Havana. US planners are also worried about the Cuban government fuelling a massive new exodus of emigrants to the United States, as well as the possibility of a dramatic escalation in hostilities in a situation similar to the 1996 shootdown.

For its part, Havana says US military hostility against Cuba continues unabated. Government sources here say the U.S. air force carries out constant patrols and manoeuvres near Cuba’s air space, while warships ply the waters of the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico around the island.

Cuba “does not want war; it does not and will not provoke it,” according to Granma. But, the newspaper adds, Cuba “has everything it needs, in all terrains, to offer unlimited resistance” to any attack.