CUBA-US: Citing ‘Plot’, Castro Calls Off Seattle Travel Plans

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Nov 30 1999 (IPS) - The third ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) opened Tuesday in Seattle without the controversial and charismatic presence of Cuban President Fidel Castro, who announced at the last minute that he would not attend, complaining of a “plot” against him backed by U.S. authorities.

Castro was to be welcomed to the U.S. city of Seattle, Washington by a range of political, business and religious leaders, academic institutions, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and trade unions.

Castro has visited the United States three times since the 1959 revolution in Cuba. The last visit took place in 1995, when the president attended a United Nations General Assembly celebrating the 50th anniversary of the world body.

The president said he did not even apply for an entry visa, as he was sure the U.S. State Department would not grant him one, although he “wished” he could go to Seattle and had been “practically determined” to do so.

Cuban Foreign Ministry spokesman Alejandro Gonzalez said Castro had spent days “bottled up in the study of all the materials of the meeting in Seattle. He is used to preparing himself completely when there are events of this nature.”

But in a letter addressed to Washington state Representative Jim McDermott, the driving force behind the invitation extended to Castro, the president cited “a plot being carried out with State Department support,” and added that “I did not want to be submitted to that humiliation.”

Castro’s letter to McDermott was read on the Monday evening news on Cuban state TV, shortly after the Cuban delegation, headed by Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque, set out for Seattle.

It was at that time that most Cubans found out that Cuban exile groups in the United States were pressing to get Castro arrested if he set foot in U.S. territory.

The exiles want Castro arrested in conection with the February 1996 shootdown by the Cuban air force of two small airplanes flown by the Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue, which according to the Castro administration had violated Cuban air space to airdrop propaganda material on the island. Four pilots were killed in the incident.

Florida congressman Lincoln Díaz-Balart wrote 100 federal and 2,900 state prosecutors, arguing that any one of them had the authority to indict Castro for the shoot-downs.

“I respectfully request that you take all necessary actions so that Fidel Castro may be charged forthwith so that he can be arrested in the United States to stand trial for the murders of Armando Alejandre, Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña and Pablo Morales”, stated the lawmaker’s letter.

Castro accused the “terrorist mafia of Miami” of attempting “to trigger a bloody armed conflict between Cuba and the United States, which in this case would be the inevitable consequence of any attempt” at arresting him in Seattle.

“The first fighting would take place, much to our regret, in that peaceful, cultured and hospitable city, at the very instant that based on rude and vile calumnies U.S. authorities tried treacherously to arrest me in Seattle,” said the president.

The northwestern U.S. city of 600,000 is hosting the representatives of 135 governments through Friday. On their agenda is the disputed launch of a new round of multilateral talks aimed at further liberalising global trade.

The debate on the issues to be dealt with at the WTO gathering has become so heated that some diplomats said they may stay on after Friday in order not to return home with empty hands.

Tens of thousands of representatives of NGOs have also flocked to Seattle to protest against the damages they say the liberalisation of trade and economic globalisation has caused to factories, farms and homes in their countries.

Cuban authorities argue that while free trade, financial deregulation and transnationalisation sound good on paper, they cannot be applied in an unjust and unequal world without profound, broad compensation measures.

Cuba backs preferential trade conditions for products from developing countries, the search for solutions to the foreign debt problem, an increase in development aid and the removal of politically-based strings attached to credit.

“I have a lot to say about this world order. I would like to go to the heart of the empire and speak out in favour of the world’s 4.5 billion poor,” Castro told Japanese reporters last week in Havana.

In his letter to McDermott, the president said the possibility of meeting in Seattle with students, professionals and academics to hold an in-depth “debate on crucial issues of our times” was even more attractive to him than taking part in the WTO conference.

“But I could not travel to U.S. territory if the government’s official spokespersons declared the visit ‘inappropriate’, or worse yet, consciously participated” in provoking the Cuban government, he added.

Presided over by Foreign Minister Pérez Roque, the Cuban delegation to Seattle is also made up of Foreign Trade Minister Ricardo Cabrisas, the head of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, DC, Fernando Ramírez de Estenoz, and the chairman of the Federation of University Students, Hassan Pérez.

Also travelling to Seattle were many of the security and communications officials who have accompanied Castro “on the most dangerous trips abroad” to support and protect the delegation “against any provocation or physical attack from the Cuban- American terrorist mafia,” Castro added.