Yahoo! September 1, 2000
Castro To Attend U.N. Summit
HAVANA, 1 (AP) - Cuban officials announced Friday that Fidel Castro plans to travel to New York to attend the U.N. Millennium Summit, the first time the Cuban president has visited the United States since 1995.
Cuba has requested visas for Castro and other top officials, who would arrive in two Cubana de Aviation jets at an undisclosed date, and has already discussed preliminary security arrangements with the U.S. secret service and New York Police department, the Foreign Ministry said in a press
statement.
The Millennium Summit, which begins Wednesday, will bring together more than 150 world leaders.
``Now everything depends on the attitude that the U.S. government assumes, if it decides to repeat or not the situation with Alarcon,'' the statement said, referring to a decision last week to deny a U.S. visa to Ricardo Alarcon, the leader of Cuba's national assembly.
In Washington, a senior U.S. official hinted Thursday, though, that Alarcon would be given permission to attend the summit.
Talks on Cuban Migration To Resume
By Barry Schweid, Ap Diplomatic Writer.
WASHINGTON, 31 (AP) - Despite their public feuding, Cuba and the United States have agreed to resume talks on legal migration of Cubans to the United States under accords signed in 1994 and 1995.
Cuba suspended the semiannual talks in June amid a clash between the Clinton administration and Cuban exiles in Florida over Elian Gonzalez, a 6-year-old boy whose mother died at sea in an attempt to get to America with him. The boy was taken home to Cuba by his father.
Cuba moved in a 15-page diplomatic note late Wednesday to start the talks up again, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.
In Havana, Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said Cuba was waiting for Washington to set a date for the new talks.
The agreements grant visas to 20,000 Cubans a year, including a portion for those with relatives in the United States.
Many more Cubans, an estimated 130,000 in one year alone - 1980 - make the 90-mile voyage to the United States illegally. An untold number have perished at sea.
The agreements permit the U.S. Coast Guard to return Cubans seized at sea to Cuba.
Boucher said the Cuban note was marked by "some tired old rhetoric'' in which Cuba portrayed itself as a victim of U.S. policy. But, Boucher said, the note also said "they are prepared'' to resume talks and that a time and place will be set.
There have been no formal relations between the United States and Cuba since Fidel Castro came to power four decades ago.
With diminishing success, the United States has tried to isolate Cuba politically and economically. But the countries exchange small diplomatic missions and the migration accords reflect a partial working relationship.
On Monday, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright raked Havana for what she said was arbitrary denial of exit permits to Cubans who had valid visas to migrate to the United States.
She said Cuba's action separated families and forced would-be immigrants to attempt high-risk escapes by boat.
Cuba, in turn, accused Washington of luring Cubans to risk their lives making the dangerous 90-mile crossing to Florida, by promising automatic residency for any Cuban who makes it ashore.
Tensions escalated with the denial of a visa to Ricardo Alarcon, the president of Cuba's National Assembly, keeping him from attending an international of parliamentarians in New York.
Alarcon accused the United States, in turn, of permitting Cubans who arrive illegally to become permanent residents after they have been in the country a year and a day, a preference even over legal immigrants from all other countries.
A senior U.S. official hinted Thursday, though, that Alarcon would be given permission to attend the Millennium summit next week in New York.
Castro Considering Trip to New York
By Mark Stevenson, Associated Press Writer.
HAVANA, 31 (AP) - President Fidel Castro may travel to New York to attend the U.N. Millennium Summit, but if not Cuba will at least send a top official to argue against what it calls the hijacking of the organization "by a small and powerful group of countries.''
"A decision will be made in the next 72 hours'' on whether Castro will visit New York for the first time since 1995, when he addressed the 50th anniversary U.N. session, Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told a news conference Thursday in Havana.
He said he was unworried about the possibility of violence or an assassination attempt against Castro in New York if he attends the Sept. 6-8 U.N. meeting. "No threat or risk is capable of scaring anybody in this country.''
Tensions between Cuba and the United States rose this week after the State Department accused the island nation of preventing some Cubans with U.S. visas from emigrating.
Cuba, in turn, accused the United States of failing to provide enough visas for poorer or less-educated Cubans, while selectively giving out visas to doctors and other professionals in what it claims is a U.S. effort to strip the island of trained personnel.
In Washington, the State Department said Thursday that Cuba had agreed to end a two-month suspension of talks on legal migration of Cubans to the United States under accords signed in 1994 and 1995.
Cuba suspended the semiannual talks in June amid a furor between the United States and Cuban exiles in Florida over Elian Gonzalez, the 6-year-old whose mother died at sea in an illegal attempt to get to America with him.
But Perez Roque said Cuba has been - and still is - waiting for Washington to set a new date for the talks.
The exchange of accusations between the two countries also escalated with the denial of a visa last week to Ricardo Alarcon, the president of Cuba's National Assembly, keeping him from attending an international of parliamentarians in New York.
Perez Roque said a U.S. visa has already been requested for Alarcon to attend the U.N. meeting. Earlier, a U.S. official suggested that visa request would be approved.
Whoever heads it, the Cuban delegation will speak out against "the growing tendency of a small and powerful group of countries to violate the U.N. charter'' by not consulting the General Assembly on key decisions, and organizing U.N.-led interventions in member countries.
Cuba will also push for arms limitation talks on the heavy conventional weapons favored by the U.S. military, like depleted-uranium rounds and "smart'' bombs.
The Millennium Summit is expected to bring together more than 150 world leaders for discussions that will focus on the role of the United Nations in the 21st century.
Perez Roque said preparations are being made for a visit to Cuba by Russian President Vladimir Putin later this year.
Cuba School To Treat Elian the Same
By Vivian Sequera, Associated Press Writer.
CARDENAS, Cuba, 31 (AP) - Schoolmates of Elian Gonzalez have been encouraged to treat the 6-year-old survivor of a shipwreck and the world's most publicized custody battle "just like anybody else'' when he starts the second grade Friday.
After months spent recovering from his ordeal in the company of friends and relatives and out of the limelight, Elian is expected to make his public reappearance when he - and 2.2 million other Cuban students - return to classes.
"Don't be hanging over all over him. The poor kid has had a lot of problems, and everything should be as normal as possible for him now,'' said Luanda Leon, recounting advice given at a meeting this week among teachers and parents of Elian's 27 new classmates.
Leon's 7-year-old son, Ariel Cisneros, will be in Elian's classroom at the high-ceilinged old school in the coastal city of Cardenas, about 90 miles east of Havana.
When Elian walks into school, it will probably be without the hordes of reporters, cameramen and photographers who followed his every move in the United States for seven months.
Cuban officials said all along that they would fight to prevent that kind of massive media coverage of the boy. Elian, who survived when his mother drowned at sea in an attempt to reach the United States, was returned to Cuba in June following a protracted custody dispute between his father and
relatives in Miami.
Elian and his family have been kept away from the media since shortly after their homecoming. They reportedly have been living at a Havana boarding school.
"He's been able to enjoy some vacations in privacy and with his family, and now he, like millions of Cuban school children, is preparing to go back to school,'' Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said Thursday in answer to reporters' questions about the boy.
"I think I can say that things have gone well for Elian Gonzalez,'' Perez Roque said. "We think we have been successful at preserving the greatest intimacy possible for this family that has suffered so much.''
Snippets of video have been broadcast occasionally on state-run television showing Elian playing with friends, riding in a small boat with his father and other relatives and swimming in a pool and among dolphins near an undisclosed beach location. Making up lost schoolwork he needed to graduate
from first grade this summer, Elian was seen practicing cursive letters on a blackboard and in a composition book.
Opponents of Elian's return to Cuba predicted that Fidel Castro would parade the boy around as a poster boy for communism. The Cuban leader appears to have made a conscious decision not to give his political enemies any ammunition to use against him and his government.
Even when Castro met the boy whose international custody battle absorbed the island nation, no photographs of the historic meeting were published and no videotaped images were shown.
Workmen this week spruced up the Marcelo Salado school, named after a revolutionary youth leader. They put in new toilets and replaced bricks in the building, which holds about 900 students.
The school will have water coolers, TV sets and videocassette recorders in every other classroom - a wealth of equipment found in some, but not all, Cuban grade schools.
Elian himself was nowhere in sight this week, and plainclothes guards stood outside his family's home to shoo away reporters.
But there is another Elian here, explains Yolaine Betancourt: her 7-year-old son, Elian Betancourt, who was playing with toy cars on the floor of a neighbor's home in Cardenas.
It may be hard for this other little Elian not to make a fuss the first day of school.
"He's very excited about meeting him,'' Betancourt said of her son's famous namesake. "My son's going to look at him like something out of this world!''
Cuba accuses Swedish journalists of subversive activities
HAVANA, Aug 31 (AFP) - The Cuban government on Thursday accused three Swedish journalists -- detained in Havana since Tuesday after making contact with independent Cuban journalists -- of encouraging subversive activities.
The Swedish embassy here said the three had been expelled and would leave Havana later Thursday.
Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told a press conference the three -- Birger Thuresson, Peter Goetell and Helena Soederqvist -- "broke Cuban laws .. and were introduced into the country disguised as tourists."
"They have encouraged subversive actions and have contributed to the desperate efforts carried out from the United States to encourage subversion in Cuba," Perez Roque added.
"These three people have been arrested by way of warning as is done in any country wherever the laws of the country are broken" the top Cuban diplomat said, adding that the Swedes have been cleared to leave Cuba on Thursday.
Sweden on Wednesday formally protested the arrests to the Cuban deputy foreign minister, who was on a visit to Norway, Aasa Arvidson of the Swedish foreign ministry told AFP.
Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh told the TT news agency that Cuba has once again shown what sort of tactics it employs to prevent foreigners from contacting ordinary Cubans.
A spokeswoman for the Swedish embassy here said the three had been expelled and would be leaving Havana later Thursday on an Air France flight.
Copyright © 2000 The Associated Press.
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