By Juan O. Tamayo . [email protected]. Published Wednesday, February 23, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Cuba confirmed Tuesday that two of its diplomats had met with accused spy Mariano Faget, but denied they were intelligence agents and claimed that President Fidel Castro had personally banned everyone in Havana's diplomatic mission in Washington from spying.
Faget ''never proposed any deals or offered sensitive information to the Cuban government, said a two-page article in the newspaper Granma believed by many Cuban analysts to have been written by Castro himself.
The unusually detailed Granma denial came as U.S. officials threatened to arrest a Cuban diplomat in Washington if he continues to resist a State Department order to leave the country because of his alleged ties to the Faget case.
''If there were grounds for his arrest, he will be arrested, vowed State Department spokesman James Rubin when asked what would happen if the diplomat remains in the United States after his diplomatic immunity expires at 12:30 p.m. Saturday.
Other U.S. officials sounded less certain about what the loss of immunity would mean.
''The institutional memory could not find a single case of a state refusing to remove a diplomat under these circumstances, said State Department spokesman Tim Moore.
The Cuban diplomat now enjoys immunity because he is accredited to the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, an embassy in all but name. If he remains inside the compound he would be beyond the reach of U.S. authorities, regardless of his diplomatic status.
In a thinly veiled threat of retaliation, the Granma article alleged that the CIA had many agents under cover at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana spying on Cuba and aiding ''counterrevolutionary groups.
DIPLOMAT NAMED
Although the U.S. and Cuban governments have refused to identify the expelled diplomat, Granma identified him as Jose Imperatori, a mid-level consular official in Washington.
The FBI complaint against the Cuban-born Faget, a 34-year veteran of the INS arrested last week, alleges he met in 1999 Miami with two Cuban diplomats ''identified by the FBI to be intelligence agents'' and ed secret information to a Cuban businessman in New York.
But Granma painted an image of innocent meetings in public places between Faget, Imperatori and another Cuban diplomat, identified only as Molina, to discuss Faget's interests in doing business in Cuba and, sometimes, immigration issues that were not classified.
The allegations against Faget and Imperatori are part of a ''dirty campaign to undermine the INS decision to send 6-year-old rafter Elian Gonzalez back to his father in Cuba, Granma claimed.
'NEVER RECRUITED'
The Granma story flatly declared that Cuban Interests Section diplomats in Washington ''have never recruited anyone for spying from the very day that that office was created more than 22 years ago.
''The president of the Council of State personally oversaw the enforcement of this policy he developed, it added, referring to Castro. Significant Granma stories that refer to Castro in the third person are taken in Cuba as having been written by the president himself.
If U.S. officials can prove that Imperatori and Molina were indeed spying, Cuba will put them on trial and punish them for ''indiscipline,'' the story added.
Asked later whether Cuba would also deny spying out of Miami or New York, a government spokesman replied, ''I am talking about Washington. U.S. officials had never before expelled any alleged Cuban spies from Washington, although they have booted a dozen or so from Havana's mission to the United
Nations since the early 1980s.
QUESTION OF TRAVEL
FBI and State Department officials meanwhile declined to say whether Imperatori and Molina had followed State Department rules when they met with Faget in Miami, or whether Faget was required to report the meetings.
Cuban diplomats in Washington are required to notify the State Department three days in advance of any travel outside a 25-mile radius, and must report the purpose of the trip and the names of any officials they plan to meet.
''But the Cubans do not always follow the regulations on their travel, said one retired FBI agent.
Copyright 2000 Miami Herald |