RESPONSE FROM DR. FIDEL CASTRO RUZ, PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA, TO THE STATEMENTS MADE BY THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT ON BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS.
Hardly three days ago, someone only too well known to us, Assistant Secretary of State Otto Reich was caught out in an embarrassing lie when he said that four Cuban planes had landed in the Venezuelan capital on April 12, and that nobody knew "what they were doing there, what they were carrying, we don’t know". Apparently, it was the beginning of an anti-Cuba campaign or a vendetta due to the amazing failure of the fascist coup he set in motion, or both.
On Tuesday May 7, when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs challenged him publicly, the State Department said that it had no confirmation whatsoever, and that it did not want to discuss the subject any more.
The idea of destroying Cuba, an obsession that has lasted more than 43 years, has lead and still leads U.S. policy down a tortuous path filled with lies, mistakes, failures and crimes. What the US government is telling the world today and what it is doing with Cuba is perhaps the most grievous and demoralizing contradiction in its foreign policy. This great power had never found itself in such a compromising position and it has no alternative but to lie, lie and lie. And there is no lack of unscrupulous characters in major public positions willing to do so, no lack of press spokesmen caught up in the continuous and bitter need to right wrongs and explain the inexplicable in their bosses’ statements.
Even men like Colin Powell, son of Jamaican immigrants, that despite his military training or maybe because of it, is not considered a hawk since he knows about war and has seen many men die --a man that many Americans even came to look on as a potential presidential candidate-- has found himself enmeshed in shameful and little ennobling intrigues promoted by such characters. He knows better than anyone else how inexperienced they are and what little intellectual and political worth those people have.
Whom this new character involved in a sinister maneuver against Cuba can deceive? Mr. John Bolton, an Under Secretary of State, none other than the one for Arms Control. What are they aiming for with the attack launched by this official in an aggressive speech against Cuba given at the Heritage Foundation, famous for its ultra-rightwing stance?
His statement, supposedly an analysis of the dangers of terrorism threatening the United States, begin by saying: "In addition to Libya and Syria, there is a threat coming from another BWC signatory, and one that lies just 90 miles from the U.S. mainland—namely, Cuba."
Then, after the usual name-calling and stupid remarks full of the hatred common in such arrogant and misinformed people, Mr. Bolton added something all his own:
"We know that Cuba is collaborating with other state sponsors of terror."
"Castro has repeatedly denounced the U.S. war on terrorism. He continues to view terror as a legitimate tactic to further revolutionary objectives. Last year, Castro visited Iran, Syria and Libya --all designees on the same list of terrorist-sponsoring states. At Teheran University, these were his words: ‘Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring America to its knees. The U.S. regime is very weak, and we are witnessing this weakness from close-up.’"
"But Cuba’s threat to our security has often been underplayed. An official U.S. government report in 1998 concluded that Cuba did not represent a significant military threat to the United States or the region. It went only so far as to say that, ‘Cuba has a limited capacity to engage in some military and intelligence activities which could pose a danger to U.S. citizens in some circumstances.’"
Mr. Bolton immediately looked for something to cover up the suspicious fact that it had never before occurred to any US government official to make such an infamous accusation against Cuba. Mr. Bolton blames this weakness on William Cohen, who was the U.S. Defense Secretary four years earlier when the criticized report was issued. Mr. Bolton made not the slightest mention of the fact that scarcely five months and two weeks earlier, on November 19, 2001, he himself made absolutely no mention of Cuba in a speech given to the conference of the parties to the Convention on Biological Weapons in Geneva when he cited many countries that were a source of concern to him as potential biological weapons producers. Why this sudden and unexpected change?
Mr. Bolton’s May 6 piece of tabloid journalism ends by saying: "For four decades Cuba has maintained a well-developed and sophisticated biomedical industry, supported until 1990 by the Soviet Union. This industry is one of the |
