CUBA: Panama Recalls Ambassador in Diplomatic Row

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Aug 23 2004 (IPS) - Cuba’s harsh reaction to rumours of a possible presidential pardon for four anti-Castro Cuban exiles in jail in Panama has brought this country to the verge of a new crisis in its often touchy diplomatic relations with Latin America.

The government of Fidel Castro warned that if Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso pardoned the four Cuban exiles who are serving sentences for plotting against the Cuban leader’s life, relations “will be automatically broken off” by Havana.

“The Panamanian president will carry the (burden of) stigma and immorality of having released confessed murderers, the worst kind of terrorist,” said an official statement in the headlines in this Caribbean island nation Monday.

According to the statement, “friends in Panama” told Havana that Moscoso had decided to pardon Luis Posada Carriles, Gaspar Jiménez, Pedro Remón and Guillermo Novo, accused of planning an attempt on Castro’s life in Panama in 2000.

Moscoso, however, denied Monday that she had included the four Cuban exiles on the list of people she planned to pardon before leaving office on Sep. 1, and ordered the immediate withdrawal of Panama’s ambassador in Havana, Abraham Bárcenas.

She said the decision came in response to “the disrespectful and intolerable statements” by Cuban officials “against the people and government of Panama.”

In 2001, Moscoso turned down an extradition request from the Cuban government for the four Cuban exiles, even though Havana had promised not to apply the death penalty if they were tried in Cuba, since Panamanian law does not provide for capital punishment.

According to sources close to the government, Cuban authorities believe it is essential to punish “known criminals of Cuban origin,” even if rifts are created in Havana’s relations with other Latin American governments.

The four Cuban exiles in Panama were accused of planning to place highly powerful plastic explosives in a University of Panama auditorium and set them off while the Cuban leader was speaking there during a 2000 visit to that Central American country.

Castro, 78, was in Panama at the time to take part in a gathering of Iberian and Latin American leaders, the last “Ibero-American summit” attended by the Cuban leader, who has survived hundreds of assassination attempts.

“The explosives could have blown up several blocks. The disaster would have caused thousands and thousands of deaths,” a professor at the University of Panama said at the time.

Havana accuses Posada Carriles of a number of terrorist actions, the bloodiest of which involved an explosion that blew up a Cubana de Aviación plane and killed 73 people in October 1976.

Early this year, a Panamanian court convicted the four men and sentenced them to between seven and eight years in prison for endangering public safety and falsifying documents – prison terms that were protested as insufficient by Havana and by labour, student and indigenous activists in Panama.

The accusing party appealed, arguing that the sentences were not in keeping with the gravity of the offences that were proven in court.

Under Panamanian legislation, the president can hand down a pardon in a case in which the trial is over and a “firm” sentence has been issued.

That means “the granting of a pardon would run counter to Panamanian law in this case,” because an appeal has been lodged, said the Cuban government, which added that it would be “an aberration from a political point of view.”

Havana says Moscoso’s alleged plan to pardon the four men is in response to pressure from anti-Castro Cuban exile organisations in the United States and the administration of George W. Bush, which – it argues – is after “votes and financing” from those groups for the November elections, in which the U.S. president is seeking re-election.

Criticism of Havana’s human rights record by several Latin American countries and the Castro government’s heated reactions have led to a number of clashes and rows in the past few years.

The worst was with Mexico, which under the current government of Vicente Fox abandoned its long-time policy of abstaining from voting on resolutions condemning Cuba in the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

The conflict between the two countries left their respective embassies without ambassadors from May to July, as the most visible sign of the cooling off of ties that have traditionally been among the warmest enjoyed by Cuba in the region.

Relations with Panama were also warm under the government of Gen. Omar Torrijos (1968-1978), who restored diplomatic links in August 1974, in a move described as “courageous” by Granma, the daily newspaper of Cuba’s governing Communist Party.

Recalling the 30th anniversary of the restoration of ties with Panama, Granma praised the independent stance taken by Torrijos, who was killed in a mysterious airplane accident on Jul. 31, 1981.

Uruguay severed diplomatic ties with Cuba in April 2002 after a war of words broke out between the two governments when Montevideo sponsored a resolution against Havana in the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

The ties between the two countries had been reestablished in 1985, after Uruguay’s 12-year military dictatorship came to an end. Relations remain at the consular level.

Cuba currently has diplomatic ties with most of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. But it has no relations whatsoever with El Salvador and only consular level relations with Costa Rica.