POLITICS-CUBA: Castro Turns to his Friends

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, May 9 2001 (IPS) - Cuban President Fidel Castro has turned his back for a few days on Havana’s tensions with several Latin American governments to visit at least three “friendly” countries.

Castro’s tour began Saturday in Algeria, took him to Iran Monday and will continue on to Malaysia Friday, according to press reports from those countries, which as usual were not confirmed by Havana for security reasons.

So far, Cuba’s government-monopolised press has merely mentioned a “tour by Fidel through several countries.”

Algeria, Iran, Malaysia and Cuba form part of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), as well as the G-77, a coalition representing 133 developing countries in the United Nations, whose first summit was held in Havana last year.

Cuba and Iran are both victims of U.S.-imposed economic sanctions.

Havana is targetted by two U.S. laws – named after lawmakers Torricelli, Helms and Burton – which stiffened the 40-year-old U.S. economic embargo against Cuba. The D’Amato-Kennedy law, meanwhile, is aimed at punishing companies that invest in the oil industries of Iran and Libya.

At the end of his visit to Algeria, a country with which Castro said Cuba had “very special ties”, he said he felt “truly happy” and 30 years younger.

Algeria was the first nation to receive Cuban military and medical assistance in the 1960s.

While the president is travelling, a team of officials in Havana has been left in charge of keeping things red-hot, or calming things down, depending on each specific diplomatic row that broke out in recent weeks with Argentina, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Panama.

Costa Rica recalled its consul from Cuba in April, and Argentina withdrew its ambassador last week, in response to remarks from Havana on the “servile attitude” of the governments of those countries towards the United States.

Guatemala, meanwhile, sent a written protest to Cuba over a giant effigy of President Alfonso Portillo exhibited in Havana during the celebration of International Labour Day on May 1st.

Also marching in the parade were puppets caricaturising Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and presidents George W. Bush of the United States, Fernando de la Rúa of Argentina, Jorge Batlle of Uruguay, Miguel Angel Rodríguez of Costa Rica, and Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic.

The puppets mocking those leaders were part of a Cuban offensive against a group of countries that voted in favour of the Czech Republic-sponsored resolution condemning Cuba in the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva on Apr 18.

The tension with Panama arose from the refusal by the government of President Mireya Moscoso to extradite to Cuba four detainees accused of planning an attempt on Castro’s life, including notorious Cuban-American anti-Castro activist Luis Posada Carriles.

With that climate at home, and amidst his new “personal battle” against the creation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in 2005, Castro has stepped up his lobbying efforts to promote a unified stance by the South vis-a-vis the industrialised North.

“The day that we unite and cooperate, and increasingly distance ourselves from conflicts and wars, is the day we will find solutions for the dramatic problems affecting this world, which is now home to more than six billion people,” Castro said on his tour.

Only a unified agenda agreed on by the developing world can counteract the growth of “Washington’s hegemonic power” and its effects on the independence and the economies of developing nations, he maintained.

Besides discussing questions specifically related to the ties between Cuba and Algeria with his opposite number Abdelaziz Bouteflika over the weekend, the Cuban president took advantage of the first stop on his tour to offer Africa Cuba’s “human capital.”

Cuba has “honourably created human wealth accumulated over 40 years of efforts – doctors, engineers, skilled workers, men and women steeped in solidarity, ready to lend their services in any remote corner of the world,” he said.

The Algerian government, for its part, said it planned to back the expansion of Cuba’s “Integral Health Programme for Africa” to Niger and Mali.

Official sources reported this week that of the 138,805 civilian aid workers that Havana has sent to countries around the world, 76,771 have provided services in Africa, including 1,884 who have worked in Algeria.

Political leaders in Africa recognise that Cuba’s assistance played a vital role in Namibia’s winning of independence, in overcoming apartheid in South Africa, and in South African leader Nelson Mandela’s release from prison.

Castro has traditionally counted on alliances with a large number of African countries in international forums – something that has not always occurred with the rest of the nations of Latin America, with which Cuba shares closer cultural ties, but which have been more critical of the Cuban revolution.

Just when the Cuban revolution was beginning to forge closer ties with Africa, in the early 1960s, Cuba was expelled by the Organisation of American States (OAS). And with the exception of Mexico, all Latin American countries severed ties with this Caribbean island nation.

“Independence-loving peoples, those who hope for a better and more just world, we have a friend, a brother, in Iran,” said Castro at the start of his visit to that Middle Eastern country, aimed partly at strengthening commercial ties between Havana and Teheran.

Trade between Cuba and Iran currently stands at 100 million dollars a year. Ties between the two countries have grown closer in recent years, especially in the field of biotechnology, with technology transfer from Cuba and the training of Iranian technicians in Havana.

Cuban Ambassador in Teheran, Darío Urra Torriente, said Castro’s visit would foment cooperation between the two countries within the NAM and G-77, which Iran currently chairs.

Castro’s visit will pave the way for “joint actions in strengthening the G-77, taking into account the situation in today’s unipolar world, and the United States’ hegemony,” said the Cuban diplomat.

On Tuesday, Castro met with President Mohammad Khatami, and visited the grave of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution. On Wednesday he met the speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mahdi Karrubi, and was to hold a conference at the University of Teheran on neo-liberal economics and the state of the international economy.

On his visit to Malaysia, Castro will also try to reconcile the two countries’ positions in the NAM and G-77, according to press reports. Diplomatic ties between Malaysia and Cuba only date back to 1998, and the possibility of future cooperation between the two countries is being discussed.