POLITICS-CUBA/RUSSIA: New Era of Tensions for Former Comrades

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Oct 18 2001 (IPS) - Cuba strongly objects to Russia’s announced closure of an electronic intelligence centre on the Caribbean island – a move Havana says is Moscow’s “special gift” to Washington – stoking a new public dispute between the two countries, though Cuba is calling for negotiations.

“The agreement on the Lourdes Electronic Radar Station has not been cancelled, since Cuba has not given its approval,” the Fidel Castro government said Thursday in an official statement released in response to Russian president Vladimir Putin’s Wednesday decision.

In the statement, Castro states that “Russia shall continue negotiating with the Cuban government, given that there are still important issues to resolve with regard to the matter.”

In the international context in which, “at this very moment, the U.S. government’s stance is more aggressive and belligerent than ever,” the dismantling of the Lourdes intelligence base “would constitute a grave threat to Cuba’s security,” says the text.

Putin said Wednesday, in a reportedly contentious meeting with Russia’s top military brass and government ministers, that the country’s bases at Lourdes, outside Havana, and at Cam Ranh, in Vietnam, would be dismantled over the next year.

The Russian chief of the General Staff, Anatoly Kvashnin, said his country’s decision comes “as a result of the change in the military-political situation in the world, and in view of the savings in financial resources,” as the annual lease on the radar station in Cuba is approximately 200 million dollars, not including the costs of maintaining the centre’s personnel.

“With this money we can buy and launch 20 reconnaissance satellites, and purchase around 100 radars,” said Kvashnin, according to the official Cuban communiqué.

Putin’s announcement marked an abrupt end to the negotiations that had been under way with Havana, which the Castro government interprets as a concession to Washington coming just prior to a meeting between the Russian leader and his U.S. counterpart, George W. Bush.

Putin is to participate this week in the Asia-Pacific Cooperation Forum (APEC) summit in Shanghai, taking advantage of the opportunity to meet with Bush and other heads of state.

Russia’s urgency to make public the decision to immediately dismantle the Lourdes base stemmed from Putin’s wish to present Bush with two important pieces of news, says the Cuban communiqué.

“It is easy to understand how much they would please their recipient: the one regarding Cam Ranh, although unimportant in reality, is highly symbolic; the one concerning Cuba would be a special gift,” states the Castro government.

Despite his disagreement with the decision, Castro indicated that “Cuba will refrain for the moment from making any judgments or criticisms” regarding Putin’s announcement. Perhaps the Russian president “did not have a chance to hear our well-founded arguments and suggestions on the matter in time, before making his public announcement.”

The Lourdes radar station was built in 1964, two years after the missile crisis that brought the world to the brink of a nuclear war – and which sparked the first major public disagreement between Moscow and Havana.

That crisis ended after Nikita Khrushchev, then secretary general of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party, negotiated with the United States the withdrawal of the missiles installed in Cuba.

The Moscow-Washington agreement saved the world from a nuclear conflict, but Castro was upset that Cuba had not been included in the decision-making process. He had wanted the missiles to stay.

In the early 1980s, a second row with Moscow convinced Havana that its “big brother” – as it once considered the now-defunct Soviet Union because of their ideological compatibility and the flow of financial assistance – would not come to the aid of the island in the case of a foreign attack.

The case was first revealed publicly in 1993 by Raúl Castro, the president’s brother who also serves as armed forces minister and vice-president.

“It was the most virulent era of the first term” of U.S. president Ronald Reagan (1981-1989), he told the ‘Sol de Mexico’ newspaper. At the time, the younger Castro had flown to Moscow to demand Russia’s support.

His efforts were not successful. It was “precisely at that moment of greatest danger that the Soviet leadership let us know, solemnly, clearly and officially, that faced with a possible military aggression from the Pentagon (U.S. Defence Department), Cuba would find itself dramatically alone,” he said.

Nevertheless, Raúl Castro himself calculated that, based on prices of the era, the Soviet Union had provided Cuba with 10 billion dollars in armaments over three decades of close bilateral military cooperation.

The supply of weapons came to a halt in 1990, with the collapse of the European socialist bloc, and in mid-1993 the last of the Motorised Infantry Brigade – a remnant of the missile crisis – was finally withdrawn from the island.

The Lourdes base, whose staff totalled some 1,500 Russian technicians and soldiers, in addition to their families, received a visit last December from Putin, accompanied by the Castro brothers.

On that occasion, “not a word was said about (a base) closure. On the contrary, there was talk of further developing and modernizing it,” according to Thursday’s official statement.

The base at one time provided 75 percent of Russia’s intelligence and for nearly four decades was also useful for communications between Moscow and some far-flung regions and with its merchant and fishing fleets, say United States sources.

Cuba also had “benefited from some of the information obtained related to our own country’s security,” says the Castro government document.

“The USSR did not pay a cent for the services it received from Cuba, in view of the close cooperation between the two countries at that time in both the economic and military fields,” according to the communiqué.

But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rules of the game changed, leading to an agreement that included payment in cash or Russian products for services that Cuba provided for the Lourdes intelligence station.

“That payment totalled 90 million dollars in 1992, 160 million from 1993 to 1995, and the 200 million mentioned by Army Commander Anatoly Kvashnin, from 1996 to 2000,” explains the official Cuban statement.

POLITICS-CUBA/RUSSIA: New Era of Tensions for Former Comrades

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Oct 18 2001 (IPS) - Cuba strongly objects to Russia’s announced closure of an electronic intelligence centre on the Caribbean island – a move Havana says is Moscow’s “special gift” to Washington – stoking a new public dispute between the two countries, though Cuba is calling for negotiations.
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