CUBA NEWS The Miami Herald 5wx6w

Cubans at Guantanamo base go on hunger strike to protest delays

Paisley Dodds, Associated Press. Posted on Tue, Sep. 21, 2004.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - A group of Cubans who tried to make it to Florida aboard a boat powered by a 1959 Buick started the fourth day of a hunger strike Tuesday to protest the limbo they've fallen into since being sent to Guantanamo Bay to await asylum claims.

The Cubans - 13 of the some 38 - began the hunger strike on Saturday after being held at the U.S. outpost in eastern Cuba for months, according to William Sanchez, a Miami attorney for Luis Grass Rodriguez, one of the Cubans who made the trip in the makeshift boat in February.

"What they're asking for is to be granted political asylum in the United States or for the United States to expedite political asylum, or for the minimum a third country, but to not keep them in Guantanamo any longer because that violates international law on political asylum and because the stay there is unbearable," said Sanchez.

The would-be migrants are among a total of about 50 Cubans and Haitians who are being held on the Leeward side of the base away, from where 550 terror suspects are being held.

Reporters from The Associated Press visiting the base in July to cover the detention of the terror suspects were turned away from the Cubans.

"A small number of Cuban migrants at Guantanamo Naval Base who are waiting third country resettlement by the State Department are conducting a hunger strike to highlight their desire to be resettled rapidly," said Darla Jordan, U.S. State department spokeswoman.

"The State Department is in active discussion with several potential resettlement counties with the goal of resettling all eligible migrants at Guantanamo as rapidly as possible."

No details were offered as to what countries might accept the Cubans.

Some of the Cubans were receiving medical care but details of their conditions were not immediately known, said a senior U.S. government official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The wound-be migrants were free to leave the Navy base at any time and return home, the official stressed.

Luis Grass, who tried to speak to the AP reporters in July, was one of the migrants who attempted the U.S.-bound trip in a Buick sedan in February. His wife and child are being held at Guantanamo. Eight others who made the trip with them were returned to Cuba.

It was unclear who else was on the hunger strike, or how long they had been held.

The Department of Homeland Security decided the Grass family had a credible fear of persecution if the were to be sent home, American officials said at the time.

Under U.S. immigration policy, Cubans who reach U.S. shores generally are allowed to stay while those caught at sea are usually returned unless they present a credible case for an asylum claim. Those Cubans are usually taken to Guantanamo.

The Cubans on the hunger strike are reportedly only drinking water to protest their detentions, Sanchez said.

House defies Bush on new Cuba travel ban

By Pablo Bachelet, [emailprotected]. Posted on Wed, Sep. 22, 2004.

WASHINGTON - Despite past White House threats of a veto, the U.S. House voted Tuesday to deny funding to implement new Bush istration restrictions on Cuban Americans' trips to Cuba to visit their relatives.

The bill now goes before a House-Senate conference committee, where a final version will be negotiated. In the past, Republican congressional leaders stripped out any language easing Cuba travel restrictions to avoid a veto by President Bush.

The new rules, implemented this summer by the president, allow Cuban Americans to visit their immediate family once every three years instead of once a year, and ban travel to visit more distant relatives like aunts and cousins.

In Tuesday's action the House voted 225-174 in favor of an amendment presented by Rep. Jim Davis, D-Fla., to the Treasury and Transportation appropriations bill to deny funding to implement the new travel restrictions.

In practical the amendment eliminates the new restrictions, but leaves the previous restrictions in place.

ers of the Davis amendment say the new rules attack family values, while those opposed argue they are necessary to stop funding a communist dictatorship.

''He will take the money,'' House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said in a reference to Cuban President Fidel Castro, whom he called "a terrorist, a murderer and a thief.''

Davis, who represents the Tampa area, said the United States "should not be in the business of separating families. This new family travel rule undermines families, punishes Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits and has minimal effect on the government of Cuba.''

The debate turned imioned at times, with DeLay saying that any lifting of the trade and travel ban with Cuba would allow Americans to buy fine cigars and cheap sugar from the island but "at a cost of our national honor.''

Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Miami Republican, called ers of the amendment ''arrogant'' for believing that they know what's best for Cuban Americans, noting that the four of Congress of Cuban descent backed the restrictions.

Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., displayed a photo of Cuban-born medic Carlos Lazo, who is serving in Iraq and is unable to visit his sons in Cuba. "This American hero is abetting terrorism? Come on, that is offensive.''

Last week ers of the travel restrictions scored a victory when Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., decided to withdraw an amendment to eliminate funding to enforce all travel restrictions -- not just the latest curbs on travel by Cuban Americans.

Exile: President Bush has failed to bring democracy to Cuba

At a Little Havana rally, a prominent exile figure denounces President Bush and his istration's policies toward Cuba.

By Karl Ross, [emailprotected]. Posted on Wed, Sep. 22, 2004.

Speaking at a Democratic Party rally Tuesday in Little Havana, a prominent Miami exile figure denounced President Bush as leading "probably the worst istration we've ever had on Cuban policy.''

The remark by Joe Garcia, former executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, signals what could be an unprecedented battle for Hispanic voters in the presidential race.

''Part of it is our fault,'' Garcia said. "Because he's been saying exactly what we want to hear -- words like freedom, democracy, liberty. But he hasn't done anything to bring this about in Cuba.''

Garcia left CANF this month to accept a post with the New Democrat Network, a recruitment arm of the Democratic National Party that is launching a $6 million media campaign targeting Hispanics.

The group showcased its first batch of political ads at the Manuel Artime Theater for the Performing Arts, 900 SW First St., before a partisan crowd. ''Beware of the name Bush,'' one of the ads stated ominously, flashing images of the president as a young man with a seemingly charmed upbringing.

The ad took jabs at Bush, showing him as a cheerleader in college, then as a national guardsman, while other men his age fought and died in Vietnam.

Another ad accused Bush of gutting public education, and featured a young Hispanic girl saying: "President Bush, why have you broken your promises?''

The event drew about 200 people, but catered to Cuban-American voters such as Rosanne Vazquez, a Miami Lakes physical therapist.

''I've always been a Republican, but I'm undecided this year,'' said Vazquez, 35.

"Bush has done an OK job, but I'm concerned about the war.''

Vazquez said her friend Mariela Fuentes, also Cuban American, persuaded her to attend.

''I was raised in a Republican home,'' said Fuentes, a New Jersey native who later moved to Miami.

"And then I got an education. Now that I know better, I'm a Democrat.''

Hialeah Mayor Ral Martnez said he believes many Cuban Americans are closet Democrats, while still others are ready to be converted.

'They didn't want to be seen as 'bad Cubans,' '' Martnez said.

"In the Cuban community it's a stigma to be a Democrat. But I think they're starting to come out.''

Martnez recalled Pope John Paul II's visit to Cuba, saying the same message applied in Miami: 'He said, 'No tengan miedo. . . Don't be afraid.' ''

U.S. uncertain about a Cuba weapons program

By Pablo Bachelet, [emailprotected]. Posted on Tue, Sep. 21, 2004.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. intelligence community has ''lost some confidence'' in a 1999 assessment that Cuba had a limited biological weapons development effort, but continues to believe the country poses a concern, a U.S. intelligence official said Monday.

''We're not saying with absolute certainty that they don't'' have a biological weapons program, the intelligence official said.

"What we're saying is that we've lost some confidence in that judgment, that they do.''

WARNINGS SINCE 2002

John Bolton, the State Department's under secretary for arms control and international security, and other top Bush istration officials had been warning since 2002 that Cuba possessed "at least a limited, developmental, biological weapons research and development effort.''

That wording came from the classified 1999 assessment carried out by the CIA and its analytical arm, the National Intelligence Council, according to State Department officials. The Cuban government has flatly denied the allegation.

The revision is part of what the intelligence official called a ''world-wide scrub'' of intelligence on biological weapons capabilities in the wake of the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a key justification to invade the country.

REVISED ASSESSMENT

istration and congressional officials pointed out that the revised assessment, first reported by The New York Times on Saturday, does not discard the possibility that Cuba has a biological weapons program, but simply states that the intelligence community is now uncertain of the reliability of the sources.

''When I see this thing characterized as a reversal, that is incorrect,'' the intelligence official said.

STILL AN ISSUE

"No one is walking off the field and saying there's no cause for concern, no potential issue here.''

The new assessment came as the State Department requested information from the intelligence community for a proliferation ''compliance report'' on Cuba, the intelligence official said.

''We felt that we owed it to them to give them our newest assessment,'' he added.

Bolton could not be reached for comment and his office said he had not yet seen the new language contained in the assessment, which is also classified.

Congressional aides on Capitol Hill told The Herald that the new assessment ''continues to say serious things about Cuba,'' adding that there is disagreement within the intelligence community ''on the assessment to downgrade Cuba's capability'' on its bioweapons program.

Peter Contostavlos, an aide to Sen. Bill Nelson, D-FL, said the language revision was ''not necessarily any news here'' because the 1999 assessment was not definitive. The new language, which Nelson's office had not seen, "should not give comfort to those that want to ease the embargo in any way.

Emilio Gonzalez, former Cuba specialist on the Bush White House's National Security Council, said of the new assessment on Cuba: "If anything, it highlights the fact that this istration continues to monitor Cuba's chemical and bioweapons capability.''

Herald staff writer Nancy San Martin in Miami contributed to this report.

Maradona back in Cuba

From Herald Wire Services. Posted on Wed, Sep. 22, 2004.

Former soccer great Diego Maradona returned to Cuba to resume treatment for cocaine addiction after a relapse confined him to a psychiatric hospital in his native Argentina and sparked unsuccessful attempts by his family to keep him home.

The 43-year-old was greeted at the Havana airport late Monday by Cuban Health Minister Jose Ramon Balaguer, Council of State member Jose M. Miyar Barrueco and Argentine Ambassador Raul Taleb.

Maradona 'demonstrated joy and happiness at returning to this country and said he would put forth all his effort to follow doctors' recommendations for his improvement,'' Cuba's Communist Party daily Granma reported Tuesday.

PRINTER FRIENDLY