CNN. From staff and wire reports. February 28, 2000. Web posted at: 2:28 p.m. EST (1928 GMT)
Transit visa expires Monday night
OTTAWA (CNN) -- Jose Imperatori, a Cuban diplomat expelled from the United States for alleged espionage activity, will be required to leave Canada within hours, the Ottawa government said Monday.
Cuba had asked that Imperatori be allowed to stay in Canada. However, Canada's foreign minister said Imperatori would not be allowed to stay longer than Monday night -- the end of a 48-hour visa that began with Imperatori's arrival in Canada on Saturday night.
"At this time, the gentleman only has a transit visa which expires this evening, and we expect he and the Cuban authorities to live up to the responsibilities of that visa," Lloyd Axworthy told reporters in Ottawa, adding, "There will be no extension."
Imperatori, 46, was taken into custody by U.S. authorities and flown aboard a U.S. government plane to Montreal late Saturday after he ignored a State Department demand to leave.
He later traveled to Ottawa and was staying at the Cuban embassy in the Canadian capital.
Cuban government television reported Sunday that Imperatori was continuing a hunger strike to protest his expulsion and would likely be staying in Canada for the immediate future.
Canada, like most Western countries, has official diplomatic ties with communist-run Cuba and has direct flights to Havana.
The televised statement said Cuba's Foreign Ministry sought to inform Canadian authorities that Imperatori, who categorically denies the U.S. spying charges, would request permission to stay in Canada and continue his protest for "the time necessary to find an honorable solution" to
his case.
'Down with the lie!'
In Cuba, Imperatori's family said it was unclear when he would arrive. As Cubans awaited his return, dozens of university students held a pro-government rally Sunday outside his family's home in Havana.
Watching demonstrators shouting, "Down with the lie!" and waving Cuban flags outside her white, two-story home in Havana's Vedado neighborhood, Imperatori's mother, Matilde Garcia, said she looked forward to her son's arrival.
"We are absolutely fine, and we are confident that everything will turn out well," she said.
Imperatori's wife, Raquel Fundora, and the couple's 3-year-old son had returned to Havana on Friday night before their diplomatic immunity expired.
"It is incredible that a person who wants to demonstrate (his innocence) ... is not allowed to," Fundora said, referring to her husband's attempts to prove he had done nothing wrong.
U.S.: Elian link 'utter nonsense'
Imperatori, accompanied by his lawyer, was escorted away from his suburban Maryland apartment by FBI officials who showed up shortly after 8:30 p.m. Saturday. The State Department said he was expelled for not voluntarily leaving by the appointed time.
Late Saturday morning, Imperatori announced his plan to defy the State Department expulsion order so he could contest allegations linking him with U.S. immigration official Mariano Faget, who has been charged with spying for Cuba.
"I declare myself in a hunger strike until I have been absolutely cleared of the accusations brought against me," Imperatori said several hours before the State Department's deadline for him to depart the country .
Cuban officials say the allegations are a smokescreen to block the return of 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez to his father in Cuba.
Faget was arrested a few days before a scheduled court hearing on the Gonzalez case, which later was postponed. The State Department has dismissed such speculation as "utter nonsense."
The boy was rescued from the Florida straits in late November after his mother and her boyfriend died, along with nine other people, trying to get from Cuba to the United States. Elian was one of three survivors.
Whether Elian should be returned to Cuba or stay with relatives in Miami has created an international furor.
Fernando Remirez, head of Cuba's diplomatic mission in Washington -- known as the Cuban Interests Section -- acknowledged that Imperatori had maintained s with Faget, but said they were no different from the kinds of aboveboard relationships the mission maintains with many Cuban-Americans
and other Americans.
On Saturday morning, Imperatori gave Remirez his resignation as consular affairs officer, leaving him without diplomatic immunity before the 1:30 p.m. Saturday deadline.
Both Imperatori and Remirez have been adamant in their insistence that the Cuban Interests Section does not engage in spying and is used solely for improving relations with the United States.
In their case against Faget, U.S. authorities said that 12 minutes after they fed him phony information about a pending defection by a Cuban official, they caught him ing it on to a with ties to the Cuban government.
Correspondent Martin Savidge, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
© 2000 Cable News Network. All Rights Reserved. |