KOSOVO-CUBA: Castro Supports Aid to Refugees – Even in Guantanamo

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Apr 8 1999 (IPS) - Cuba declared its support Thursday for any humanitarian aid extended to Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian refugees, even if that assistance involved the controversial U.S. naval base in the eastern Cuban province of Guantanamo.

Instead of the habitual opposition to Washington’s use of that military enclave, the government of Fidel Castro said it would not “put up any obstacle,” and that it was even willing to cooperate “to the extent of its possibilities, wherever necessary.”

“Cuba unwaveringly supports the humanitarian aid effort, whereever it comes from,” said an official statement published Thursday on the front page of ‘Granma’, the organ of the governing Communist Party.

Although the document did not specifically mention the Guantanamo naval base, it alluded to “personal opinions…erroneously attributed to the Cuban government,” which implied that Havana would be opposed to the housing of Kosovar Albanian refugees in Guantanamo.

“The innocent victims of any nationality, ethnic group or religion must receive the greatest amount of help, both within and outside Yugoslavia,” stressed the declaration, which reiterated the Cuban government’s criticism of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) air attack on Yugoslavia.

The exodus of around 500,000 ethnic Albanians from the Yugoslav province of Kosovo in the past two weeks has far overrun the response capacity of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The possibility of using the U.S. military enclave in Guantanamo, 970 kms from Havana, arose Monday when U.S. officials announced that some 20,000 refugees to be accepted by the United States could be housed there on a temporary basis.

The Guantanamo naval base was set up in Cuba in 1903, in the wake of the Spanish-American war. The base was imposed on Cuba in the framework of the U.S. Platt Amendment, which authorised the United States to militarily intervene in this Caribbean island nation.

Upon its arrival to power in 1959, the Castro government declared the military enclave on Cuban territory illegal, and demanded that it be dismantled.

On several occasions over the past decade, Havana protested the use of the Guantanamo base as “a concentration camp” for undocumented Haitians and Cubans intercepted in their attempt to enter the United States.

Cuba’s utility companies provide no services to the military base.

Although in the past few years, the Pentagon has invested an estimated 70 million dollars in upgrading installations on the base, the enclave is considered an inhospitable place, located in a desert-like area with an extremely dry climate and high temperatures, favourable to the spread of epidemics.

The head of the U.S. army Southern Command, Gen. Charles Wilhem, reported Wednesday that equipment and supplies needed in order to begin receiving the refugees from Kosovo had been sent to Guantanamo.

Wilhem announced that he would personally visit the base to discuss the decision with the officers and troops posted there. He added that the Southern Command was ready to carry out a contingency plan to transfer thousands of refugees.

U.S. State Department spokesman James Rubin specified Monday that the arrangements for housing the refugees were only temporary, as the United States meant for them to return home once the crisis was over.

The U.S. government blames the refugee crisis on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who Washington accuses of “emptying” the region of Kosovo.

The Cuban government, meanwhile, says this is not the time to “argue about who is responsible for what is occurring, and for the events that led up to” the situation in Yugoslavia.

The statement in Granma maintained that only a political solution to the conflict in Yugoslavia was possible, because “observing geography and other realities, any military support to Serbia from abroad is only possible with unconventional, in other words nuclear, weapons,” which is simply “inconceivable.”

“The destruction, in the middle of winter, of a thermo- electric plant that supplies electricity and heat to a million people, and attacks on similar installations providing vital services to the entire population, is far from a military objective, but rather verges on genocide.”