By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Mar 22 2005 (IPS)

As the U.S.-Cuba conflict heats up in the arena of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights – where the United States is once again pushing for the adoption of a resolution condemning the socialist island nation – the tension was briefly relocated to the streets of Havana.

There is a "war" underway between the government of George W. Bush, "which promotes internal subversion in Cuba", and the "immense majority" of the Cuban population who defend the revolution, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque said Monday.

Pérez Roque was referring to an incident that took place on Sunday, during the weekly "silent protest" staged by the so-called Ladies in White, a group of 30 women whose husbands are among the 75 government opponents sentenced to lengthy jail terms in 2003.

Every Sunday, the prisoners’ wives gather outside a Havana church, dressed in white, and spend several hours walking up and down the neighbouring streets in a peaceful demonstration.

This week, however, they were confronted by around 100 members of the Cuban Federation of Women, shouting slogans like "the streets belong to the revolutionaries."

Pérez Roque maintained that it was perfectly legitimate for "the people to defend their streets and oppose those who work inside Cuba for the government of the United States," although he added that it was important to avoid "excesses" in these kinds of confrontations.

The issue boils down to the fact that while the imprisoned government opponents and others like them are considered dissidents by some, the Cuban authorities maintain that they are mercenaries employed by the U.S. government, which approved a budget of 59 million dollars in 2004 to promote "political change" on the island.

In fact, "the use of mercenaries as a means of violating the human rights of other peoples" is the subject of one of nine resolutions that Cuba is submitting to the Commission on Human Rights this year.

The Cuban government has the backing of other countries in the Commission that are opposed to the politicisation of that U.N. body and the "singling out" of specific countries for this purpose.

Havana is criticised by the United States and the European Union (EU) for failing to guarantee human rights like freedom of expression and association.

But according to Pérez Roque, Washington’s "failure" is reflected by the fact that the United States has been forced to present this year’s draft resolution condemning Cuba all by itself.

"Despite intensive efforts," he noted, the U.S. administration "has been unable to find a Latin American or eastern European country willing to submit the resolution," as it did in the past five years.

Since 1990, with the exception of 1998, resolutions against Cuba’s human rights record have been adopted by the Commission every year. While these draft resolutions were initially presented by the United States itself, it turned to the practice of having other countries sponsor them several years ago.

The U.N. Commission on Human Rights, which meets in Geneva, is made up of representatives of 53 countries that rotate periodically. This year, the 11 Latin American countries on the Commission are Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay and Peru.

The theory of the international community’s concern over human rights violations in Cuba has been knocked down, said Pérez Roque, and as a result, the United States fears it will be defeated this year in the Commission.

Moreover, he noted, the draft resolution now circulating in Geneva does not condemn the island for specific violations, but actually acknowledges that its main purpose is to keep the issue of Cuba on the Commission’s agenda until the next session.

And the reason Washington wants to keep Cuba on that agenda, he added, is because it needs to justify its over 40-year economic blockade against Cuba, which was further stiffened over the last decade.

Unlike in previous years, the Cuban foreign minister did not refer to the positions adopted by the specific Latin American countries on the Commission, and merely stated that in some cases, abstention would be "a heroic gesture."

At the same time, he predicted that the EU governments would vote in favour of the U.S. resolution, because "they cannot allow themselves to stray" from this stance. "They put priority on their relations with the superpower, and vote in its favour," he said.

Regarding the crisis in Cuba-EU relations that erupted over a year and a half ago – due in part to the imprisonment of the 75 dissidents – Pérez Roque reported that Cuba has proposed a change in the current framework of bilateral relations that includes a mutually acceptable agreement on human rights.

The main obstacles to this initiative, he said, are the EU’s support for the anti-Cuban resolution in Geneva and the maintenance of the "common position" on Cuba, which makes any changes in bilateral relations conditional on political changes on the island.

In the meantime, Pérez Roque said that he granted no importance whatsoever to the meeting held Monday in Havana between representatives of illegal internal opposition groups and diplomats from EU nations.

One of the participants in the meeting, dissident Oswaldo Payá, commented afterwards that if the EU is going to engage in a dialogue with the Cuban government, the talks should include "the urgent issue of the release of the political prisoners." A number of the jailed government opponents are members of Payá’s Christian Liberation Movement.

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