Center for International Policy

February 10, 2006 Friday

Cuba-US rancour hits new heights amid war of words

By MARC FRANK

Relations between Cuba and the US are being pushed to breaking point by a bizarre spat that began with an electronic sign fixed to the side of the US mission in Havana.

The five-foot high ticker, which is spread across 25 windows of the mission's fifth floor, is broadcasting a constant stream of quotes from human rights and anti-communist leaders. Its inaugural message, "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up", from Martin Luther King Jnr's 1963 speech, appeared in crimson text on January 16.

The Cubans returned the compliment by constructing billboards around the mission that claim it is linked with anti-Cuba terrorists everywhere.

Traffic around the mission, which overlooks Havana's picturesque seaside highway, has been diverted for weeks and, just 500ft from the mission's door, "the anti-imperialist tribunal" - a huge outdoor stage - has become the venue for Cuban political and cultural events.

Meanwhile, the ticker has continued to beam into the Havana night human rights messages and historical calls for democracy by various luminaries, including leaders of east European revolts against communism such as former Polish President Lech Walesa and Czech leader Vaclav Havel.

Fidel Castro, Cuban president, is not happy. "The only purpose of this garbage is to provoke the destruction of our tenuous links, as if we needed them," he recently said of the ticker. Late last month Mr Castro marched more than a million people by the mission in protest.

He says the US is protecting exiled former CIA agents Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, who Havana has accused of dozens of terrorist acts, including the 1976 bombing of a Cuban plane off the Barbados coast, in which all 73 aboard were killed. Mr Bosch lives in Miami, having been pardoned for other crimes by George H. W. Bush when he was president. Mr Carriles has been held on a minor immigration charge since entering the US illegally last year. "Anyone who harbours a terrorist is a terrorist," one Havana billboard reads, quoting George W. Bush, the US president. Another features a bomb stamped with the phrase "Bush and Posada Co".

Mr Castro says the US mission has become "the general headquarters of the counter-revolution" and has restricted US diplomats' movements and clamped down on dissent. This week, Cuba blocked the ticker - which it calls the "perfidious provocation" - from view with scores of black flags flying from a former car park across the road.

"This would truly be hilarious if the consequences were not potentially so serious," said a European diplomat. "One gets the sense neither side is thinking where all this might end."

Cuba says the flags represent the more than 3,400 people it claims have been killed by US-sponsored violence over the years, from the Bay of Pigs invasion to a string of blasts at Havana hotels and night spots in the late 1990s.

The US, meanwhile, insists that democracy and human rights are the issue at stake in its contentious relations with "Fidel Castro's totalitarian regime".

"We are simply trying to communicate with the Cuban people and will continue to do so," the top US diplomat on the island, Michael Parmly, says of the ticker.

The Bush administration has proved particularly aggressive toward the communist-run island, expelling 14 Cuban diplomats, tightening sanctions, restricting contacts at all levels and ordering its diplomats to openly taunt Mr Castro and support his opponents.

Wayne Smith, who opened the US mission under former US president Jimmy Carter, says the Bush administration is trying to provoke the closure of the Counselor-level Interests Sections, which were established in 1977 to handle visa and other administrative matters.

"Many in the administration have the idea Cuba is simply beyond the pale and we shouldn't have contact with them at all," Mr Smith added, concluding that the policy would lead to the cancellation of immigration accords and a new crisis between the two countries.