POLITICS-US: Tug-of-War on Cuba Policy

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Abid Aslam

WASHINGTON, May 10 1998 (IPS) - Two reports circulating in the United States during the past week illustrate the tug-of-war that is still going in regarding U.S. policy toward Cuba.

The U.S. Defence Department drew fire from opponents of rapprochement with Cuban President Fidel Castro when it described the Caribbean nation’s military as an emaciated force incapable of harming its neighbours.

Hard-liners blasted the Pentagon assessment, even though the report’s release had been delayed since March to give national security officials time to make revisions that, according to one published account, “would harden the report to bring it into line with U.S. policies against the country.”

Then ‘The New York Times’ reported that leaders of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), one of the most powerful lobbying organisations in the United States, have been targeted by a federal investigation into a 1997 plot to assassinate Castro.

Administration officials have said they need a “new approach” to relations with Cuba but have had to assure hard-liners that such an approach would not weaken demands for political reform in the hemisphere’s last Communist state.

President Bill Clinton, following exhortations by Pope John Paul II during his visit to Havana in January, eased restrictions on charter flights and shipments of food and medicine to Cuba and permitted Cuban-Americans to remit money to relatives there.

A number of Cuban-American groups, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and USA-ENGAGE, a pro-free trade business coalition, welcomed the moves. But hard-liners including CANF, now embroiled in the federal investigation of the apparent assassination plot last October, denounced them.

Clinton, asked if he would consider new goodwill gestures in light of the Defence Department findings, said Cuban authorities had not yet shown “whether they really wish to have a rapprochement.”

He noted that the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which codified the long-standing U.S. embargo against Cuba, prevented him from making gestures. Hard-liners have criticised the Administration for not applying Title III of the law, which would enable U.S. citizens to sue third-country companies for investing in properties expropriated from them after Castro came to power in 1959.

Clinton last week assured those critics that he could never “accept some of the anti-democratic and, frankly, clearly anti- human rights policies of the government” in Havana.

The Pentagon report found that the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, halved in size and budget and starved for supplies since Soviet-era aid was cut off in 1989, have been transformed “from one of the most active militaries in the Third World into a stay- at-home force that has minimal conventional fighting ability,” according to an unclassified version of the report, submitted to Congress Wednesday.

Most military equipment is in storage and must be cannibalised for spare parts, according to the report, prepared by the Defence Intelligence Agency in conjunction with the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the National Security Agency, and the U.S. military’s Southern Command Joint Intelligence Centre.

The army, no longer capable of mounting effective operations, “must now grow its own food and raise money to pay for some of its own expenses. Significant numbers of active duty forces are devoted to agricultural, business, and manufacturing activities that help feed the troops and generate revenues,” according to the report.

The navy, whittled down to perhaps little over a dozen surface vessels, “has no capability to sustain operations beyond its territorial waters and focuses on defence of the Cuban coast.” The air force has fewer than two dozen operational Soviet MiG fighters and “pilot training is judged barely adequate to maintain proficiency.”

In contrast, “intelligence and counterintelligence systems directed at the United States appear to have suffered little degradation. Cuba has shared intelligence with other countries including U.S. adversaries” and allows Moscow to maintain a listening post on its territory.

In addition, the report warned: “Cuba’s current scientific facilities and expertise could support an offensive BW (biological warfare) programme in at least the research and development stage.” There are no signs Cuba actually is researching such weapons, defence analysts said, and the Defence Department’s 1997 report on weapons proliferation did not identify Cuba as worth watching.

“Cuba does not pose a significant military threat to the U.S. or to other countries in the region,” the Pentagon concluded. “Cuba has little motivation to engage in military activity beyond defence of its territory and political system.”

Those findings came as no surprise here but were assailed by hard-liners. Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Cuban-born Republican from Florida, said the report “blatantly minimised” the Cuban threat.

Meanwhile, according to ‘The New York Times’:

– Government officials said their investigation of last October’s plot against Castro’s life has led them to CANF leaders. The cabin cruiser La Esperanza, boarded by the U.S. Coast Guard on suspicion it was hauling drugs off Puerto Rico, belonged to a company owned by a CANF board member and two high- powered rifles found on board were registered to the Foundation’s president.

– The boat set sail from a private dock in Florida owned by another Foundation member whose business partner is the group’s treasurer.

– The Foundation raised more than one million dollars for both Republicans and Democrats, publicly advocated non-violence in seeking to change the Cuban regime, and forged close ties to every president since Ronald Reagan. Yet, the assassination attempt appeared to have been the deathbed wish of its founder, Jorge Mas Canosa, who was “the behind-the-scenes architect of America’s hard-line policies on Cuba before his death last year from lung cancer.”

If the enquiry concluded CANF leaders supported commando raids against Castro, “that would weaken the organisation’s credibility on Capitol Hill and leave an opening for those who favour a less confrontational approach to Cuba,” the ‘Times’ asserted. A CANF spokesman had no comment on the report. Lawyers denied allegations against the men under investigation.

A stronger reaction came from Ricardo Pesquera, lawyer for Angel Alfonso Aleman, the man authorities said had told them the weapons on the cabin cruiser were his and he alone knew of the assassination plans. If officials took his client to trial, Pesquera told the newspaper, “we will…atttack their hypocrisy.”

The lawyer, holding a sheaf of declassified U.S. intelligence documents, complained that “for 30 years they tried to kill Castro and now they say others can’t do the very same thing they were doing.”

The only charges brought so far have been against Alfonso and three other men on board the ‘La Esperanza’ last October.