[A-List] Cuba Maintains Vigilance as U.S. Expels Diplomats

[Macdonald Stainsby <mstainsby@xxxxxx>]

Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the May 29, 2003
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------

CUBA MAINTAINS VIGILANCE AS U.S. EXPELS DIPLOMATS

By Gloria La Riva

In its latest provocation against Cuba, the Bush administration has
suddenly expelled 14 Cuban diplomats from the United States, falsely
inferring that they were engaged in espionage on the U.S. The Cubans
were assigned to the Cuban Mission to the United Nations in New York and
the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C.

Since the U.S. broke diplomatic relations with Cuba in early 1961, just
months before the CIA sponsored an invasion at the Bay of Pigs in an
attempt to turn back the Cuban Revolution, the Interests Section has
been Cuba's only official link in the United States.

With the bogus charges and mass expulsions, the U.S. government seems
to be trying to further escalate tensions--and perhaps provoke a reciprocal
expulsion of U.S. diplomats by Cuba--to justify more aggressive action
by Washington.

Cuba's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in response, "The expulsion of
the Cuban diplomats is done with the objective of provoking an
escalation that could culminate in the closing of the Interests Sections
of both countries, as the anti-Cuba terrorist mafia has demanded
historically."

The timing of the expulsions was only two days before President George
W. Bush was to give an anti-Cuba address on May 20, a speech that the
New York Times of April 16 said could contain "a series of steps to
punish the Cuban government."

The newspaper said administration officials were "preparing a variety of
options for the president," including the ending of direct flights to
Cuba and eliminating cash remittances from Cuban-Americans to their
families in Cuba.

BUSH 'SPEECH' SAYS NOTHING

However, when the time came, Bush, surrounded by Cuban right-wingers at
the White House, delivered a 66-word, 40-second, one-paragraph "speech"
dripping phrases like "freedoms and rights" but announcing no official
policy changes toward Cuba.

Bush played it very low-key, but that may be only temporary.

It is possible that the development of other crises in the world in
recent days, including bombings in the Middle East, growing resistance
in Iraq, and the deployment of U.S. troops to the Philip pines, might
have forced this belligerent president to pull back momentarily
regarding Cuba.

Even the most powerful imperialist country has resource limitations.

But it is most likely that the administration was unable to draw Cuba
into a confrontation that would work to its advantage.

Washington has been hoping to unleash an emigration crisis. Even though
the U.S. made an agreement, codified in the Cuban Adjustment Act of
1966, to allow in 20,000 Cubans a year through normal immigration
procedures, the State Department has granted only a few hundred visas to
Cubans so far this year. At the same time, it has gone easy on those who
hijack planes and boats from Cuba to the U.S.

There were seven armed hijackings over a seven-month period. Finally,
when a Cuban ferry boat and its passengers were seized by armed
hijackers on April 11, the Cubans saw this as the product of a serious
escalation of Wash ington's campaign of threats and subversion. The
prosecution asked for the death penalty for the three hijackers, a
sentence that was carried out after their appeal was rejected by a
higher court. Since this stern action, there have been no more hijacking
attempts.

After denunciations by some intellectuals abroad who had been considered
friends of Cuba, the Cuban government defended the measure as necessary
to insure its stability and security at a time of extreme threat from
outside. All this took place while the U.S. was showing the world in the
most brutal way in Iraq what it means by "regime change."

Bush's latest actions toward Cuba are also generating debate and
contention within the U.S. political establishment. A sign of that rift
was the May 15 revelation by the FBI that the decision to detain the
Cuban diplomats came from the White House and the State Department.

The 14 expelled diplomats received a warm welcome when they returned to
Cuba and spoke to the people via television, radio and newspapers. They
denounced the expulsions as politically motivated.

The expulsions may also have been directed in part at certain diplomats
for the work they have conducted on behalf of the five Cuban political
prisoners who are unjustly incarcerated in U.S. prisons. Two of the
Cubans who had been based in the D.C. consular office, Florentino
Batista González and José Anselmo, attended to the needs of the Cuban
Five, visiting them frequently in the prisons where they are held across
the U.S. and sharing news from their loved ones back home.

On his arrival in Havana on May 19, Florentino Batista talked to Cuba's
Granma newspaper about the country's five heroes: "The best memory and
gift that I take with me from my stay in the United States is to have
known all of them. Any sacrifice for them was worth it."

- END -

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