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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: maceng2 who wrote (51522)	10/13/2002 5:09:35 AM
From: maceng2	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Conference shows how close war was news.bbc.co.uk At a conference in the Cuban capital, Havana, marking the 40th anniversary of the missile crisis, delegates have said that they were much closer to nuclear war than had previously been thought. Studying newly declassified documents, Cuban, American and Russian protagonists in the events of 1962 were told that on 27 October a US navy destroyer dropped depth charges off the Cuban coast almost accidentally hit the hull of a Soviet submarine carrying a nuclear warhead. The US military "did not have a clue that the submarine had a nuclear weapon on board," Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archives said. "They exploded right next to the hull," Vadim Orlov, the submarine's signals intelligence officer, said in a written account of the incident. At first, submarine crew members considered using the nuclear weapon, thinking that war had erupted, Mr Orlov wrote in his account. But ultimately the craft surfaced. Looming war Politicians, military figures and academics from Cuba, Russia and the United States are participating in the three-day event. Cuban leader Fidel Castro, dressed in a black suit and tie, joined the former US Defence Secretary, Robert McNamara, to discuss what is known in Cuba as the October Crisis. The organisers, from George Washington University, say that with the prospect of war against Iraq looming, the diplomacy shown in 1962 could offer lessons to today's leaders. Mr McNamara said: "It was the best managed foreign policy crisis of the last 50 years." He credited Mr Castro, former US President John F Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev for ensuring the world was saved from nuclear destruction. Many of those attending are meeting for the first time - including Mr McNamara, Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Georgi Konyenko, and senior Cuban generals. The missile crisis is widely seen as the closest the world has ever come to nuclear war. On the morning of 15 October 1962, a US spy plane spotted Soviet missiles being deployed in Cuba - leading to 13 days of heated exchanges between John F Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, with war looking increasingly likely. Then, on 28 October, the Soviets agreed to withdraw, as long as the US did not invade Cuba. As part of the conference, delegates will visit a former missile silo at San Cristobal in western Cuba