POLITICS-CUBA/US: Hijacking Occurs on Eve of Migration Talks

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Sep 20 2000 (IPS) - A plane hijacked in Cuba with as many as 18 people on board went down in the sea as its pilot presumably attempted to reach the United States, an incident that is likely to heighten tensions during the migration talks between the two nations, slated for Thursday and Friday after nearly a year of postponements.

Sources from the Cuban Institute of Civil Aeronautics said an official bulletin on the hijacking was forthcoming, but limited comments to saying that the aircraft was a Soviet-made crop duster and was hijacked in the island’s western province of Pinar del Río.

A US merchant ship recovered nine of the airplane’s passengers alive, in addition to one body. The survivors were reportedly taken to Key West – islands belonging to the US state of Florida – for medical attention, according to the US Coast Guard.

Various sources indicated that the aircraft went down in international waters, some 48 km north of Cuba, and placed the number of passengers at 14 to 18.

Officials in Havana have not confirmed they will take part in the new round of discussions to evaluate the migration accords that Cuba and the United States signed in 1994 and 1995. However, officials from the US Interests Section in the Cuban capital affirmed the meetings will be held the last two days of this week.

Since 1962, when Washington imposed a blockade against the island, migration has been the only matter that has brought Cuba and the United States to the negotiating table, and is the only point for official contact between the two.

Every six months, both countries review the compliance and status of the agreements, but after the round of talks held last December, July’s session was postponed – to await “more appropriate conditions,” according to Cuba.

After winning the return of the shipwrecked boy Elián González last June 28, the Fidel Castro government stepped up its campaign against US laws that allow Cuban immigrants to obtain residency there after just one year, whether or not they have entered that country illegally.

Castro says the legislation has encouraged thousands of Cubans to take to the sea, risking their lives as they try to emigrate to the United States, as well as fomenting the illegal trafficking of migrants.

According to the latest official reports, the island is holding 68 people in prison for charges of migrant smuggling, a crime severely punished under current Cuban law.

Tuesday’s hijacking harkens back to other problems Castro attributes to US policy and that, in the past, have weighed heavily on previous migration talks.

As negotiations were underway in New York in 1977, a US court found three Cubans innocent of hijacking after they had entered the country in a stolen aircraft.

One month before that, former Cuban military officer José Fernández Pupo had been absolved in a trial for hijacking a plane that he flew to Guantánamo, the US navy enclave located on the island’s eastern extreme.

Havana insisted then that the accused in those cases be returned to Cuba “in virtue of the migration accords” in effect at the time.

The matter was brought up during the New York talks by the Cuban delegation, headed by Ricardo Alarcón, president of parliament, who insisted that the cases of the hijackers violated the spirit of the accords.

The migration agreements currently in effect commit Washington to repatriating clandestine Cuban immigrants intercepted at sea, and require Havana to refrain from reprisals against the would-be emigrants who are returned to the island.

The accords also authorise the United States to grant 20,000 visas annually to Cuban citizens. But Washington charged in August that Cuba was preventing people from leaving the island, even though they had obtained legal permission to enter the United States.

Alarcón denied the charges and, in turn, accused Washington of provoking the island’s “brain drain” by encouraging the emigration of Cuban doctors and scientists.

Another recent source of friction has been the US State Department’s refusal to grant Alarcón a visa to travel to New York in late August for a meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

Then, the State Department did not allow the Cuban parliamentary leader to visit Washington DC after his stay in New York, where he participated in the United Nations Millennium Summit.

Alarcón was in charge of Cuba’s participation in drafting the migration accords and has led the island’s delegations in all subsequent evaluation meetings.