CUBA-U.S.: Back at the Negotiating Table

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Dec 4 1996 (IPS) - The governments of Cuba and the United States sat down at the negotiating table again Wednesday, eight months after a blow-out triggered by Cuba’s shooting down of two small aircraft flown by U.S.- based exiles.

The sixth round of talks on immigration — the only subject Washington and Havana seem to agree on — was to take place at the beginning of the year. But negotiations came to a standstill when on Feb. 24 the Cuban air force shot down two civilian planes flown by members of a Cuban exile group.

The incident, which was taken to the U.N. Security Council and investigated by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), spurred the enactment of the Helms-Burton act that aimed to stiffen the U.S. embargo against Cuba.

This week’s talks, which end Thursday, are to follow up on compliance with the September 1994 and May 1995 immigration accords, designed to put an end to unauthorised Cuban emigration to the United States.

The United States promised to issue at least 20,000 resident visas a year and deport all Cubans who reached U.S. territory without going through the proper channels. Cuba agreed to guard its borders against unauthorised departures and to take no reprisals against those who were repatriated.

By late November the United States had issued more than 40,000 visas and sent home 504 undocumented Cubans who were intercepted at sea or found trying to enter the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo, Cuba, some 900 kms from Havana.

“There are several points to which the attention of U.S. authorities must be called, after a year of no meetings,” said Ricardo Alarcon, president of parliament and head of the Cuban delegation to the talks.

Alarcon said that several “violations” of the accords by Washington — “the breaking of international law, use of force, acts of violence and air piracy…which should have been discussed long ago” — would be brought up.

For example, Cuba will bring up the cases of a hijacker of a Cuban airplane and a group of people who fled on rickety boats and were picked up at sea. None were returned home as stipulated by the accords, in spite of Cuba’s specific request.

Among the questions pending since the last round of talks on Nov. 28, 1995 in Havana figures the U.S. complaint against the high fares Havana charges emigrants to the United States.

Although Cuba cut its fares from 950 to 750 dollars in September 1995, the United States still considers the price too steep and a curb on the normalisation of the immigration process. The average salary here is 200 pesos. Cubans pay 20 pesos for a dollar, and usually depend on family members living abroad for access to the currency, which is needed to buy such essentials as cooking oil and powdered milk.

The current round of talks coincided with the announcement here in Havana of possible U.S.- Cuban negotiations next year on the use of air routes, to be brokered by the president of the ICAO, Assad Kotaite.

The United States refuses to let Cuba use routes over its territory, which according to a Cuban claim before the ICAO has meant some 36 million dollars in losses for the government of Fidel Castro.

Rogelio Acevedo, the president of Cuba’s Civil Aeronautics Institute, announced that Kotaite would visit both Cuba and the United States in January to lay the groundwork for a meeting between the two governments.

Local analysts say that during President Bill Clinton’s second term other questions of bilateral interest — such as the fight against drug trafficking and cooperation between the two countries’ respective Coast Guards — could also make it to the negotiating table.