Cuba's Response to September 11

Within hours of the September 11 attacks, the Cuban government issued a statement in which it condemned the attacks and rued the "distressing and unjustifiable loss of human lives." The Cuban government also immediately offered its airspace to U.S. aircraft that were still en route to the U.S. when the FAA closed the American airspace, as well as humanitarian aid to the victims. Despite the public rejections of terrorism by Castro and Cuba's responsible conduct, the State Department insisted in its 2001 report, Patterns of Global Terrorism, that "Castro continued to view terror as a legitimate revolutionary tactic."

Before and after September 11th, Cuba has sought to improve security cooperation in the areas of counter-terrorism, drug-interdiction and illegal migrant smuggling. Though the U.S. Coast Guard quietly cooperates on a very minimal but critical level with Cuban authorities, Cuban offers of increased cooperation since September 11th have been repeatedly rejected by the U.S.

Post 9/11 U.S. - Cuba Relations

With regards to Cuba and terrorism, two post-September 11 tensions have arisen. The State Department has stepped-up its rhetoric against Cuba, going so far as to accuse Cuba of "disrupting" the war on terrorism with false leads and of maintaining that, "Cuba has at least limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort." Cuba insists that these allegations are false, that they are politicized claims made to mollify an impatient hard-line segment of Cuban-American Miami. Cuba points out that the first commercial airline bombing (in 1976) was perpetrated by Cuban exiles working from and with extensive ties to Miami. Cuban exile terrorists have struck not only in Cuba, but also in New York, Miami, Washington DC and all over Latin America for nearly 40 years.

Since September 11, the State Department has made a number of inflammatory charges against Cuba, the most publicized of which was Undersecretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton's May allegation of a Cuban bioweapons research and development "effort". These charges created quite a stir in the U.S. media, but as Bolton and other Bush administration officials were unable to offer any evidence whatsoever for the allegations, and the uproar coincided with Nobel Laureate and former President Jimmy Carter's historic trip to Cuba in May, the bioweapons charges came to be regarded as a politically motivated attack.