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Castro seen as starting new interventionism
Posted on Thu, Apr. 25, 2002 in
The Miami Herald
Cuban President Fidel Castro's latest diatribes against Mexico and other
Latin American countries that recently voted to demand a United Nations human
rights mission to Cuba may be much more than an effort by the ''maximum leader''
to divert attention from his island's domestic problems.
There is a growing view among U.S. and Latin American diplomats that Castro,
who suffered a political blow last week when seven Latin American countries
sponsored the region's first human rights resolution against Cuba at the United
Nations, may be starting a new cycle of open intervention in Latin American
countries' domestic affairs.
Castro, who had successfully rebuilt Cuba's diplomatic relations with Latin
American countries in the '90s but is now facing a growing mixture of apathy and
criticism from his neighbors, may now be turning to his ''Plan B:'' using Latin
American opposition parties as a political weapon to press governments to
support his 4-decade-old dictatorship.
''He is trying to generate political and public opinion pressures to force
us to reconsider our Cuba policy,'' a top Mexican diplomat told me Wednesday.
''He's playing the domestic political card because he knows that he cannot force
us to backtrack from our pro-human rights policy.'' Granted, Castro has always
played the ''domestic political'' card in Latin America, but in recent years he
had done it more secretly, because he didn't want to antagonize the very
governments he was trying to court.
But now that Latin American countries turned against Cuba at the U.N. Human
Rights Commission and Uruguay became the first country in the Hemisphere in many
years to break relations with Cuba earlier this week, Castro may be opting for a
more overt political intervention in the region.
POLITICAL QUAKE
Consider the political earthquake he provoked in Mexico this week by calling
a press conference in Havana and releasing a secretly taped recording of a
telephone conversation with Fox on March 19, two days before a U.N. summit on
economic development in Monterrey.
According to Castro, the tape proves that Fox had lied to the world by
stating publicly that he had not asked Castro not to attend the summit, nor
pressured him to leave before President Bush's arrival.
In the tape, Fox is heard suggesting Castro to leave town after lunch April
22, the day of Bush's arrival, "so that you create no complications for me
on Friday.''
Castro told the press conference that the tape proved that Fox is ''totally
dependent'' on the United States. It was like touching a major scar in a country
that still resents having lost half of its territory to the United States in the
mid-19th century. In effect, Castro was giving Mexico's opposition a precious
political weapon with
which to attack -- and embarrass -- the Mexican president.
Rosario Robles, president of the left-leaning Democratic Revolutionary
Party, called Fox "a liar.''
Another PRD leader, Marti Batres, called Fox's demands on Castro "the
biggest disgrace Mexican foreign policy has ever suffered.''
The PRI, a corruption-plagued authoritarian party that ruled Mexico for 71
years until Fox's election two years ago, charged that Fox's U.N. vote on Cuba
has ruined Mexico's 100-year-long special relationship with Cuba.
SEEKING GREATER SAY
The two opposition parties are making the most of Castro's political
present. The Institutional Revolutionary Party and the PRD, the big losers of
the 2000 elections that brought Fox to power, control two thirds of the Mexican
Congress, and are fighting for a greater congressional say in national and
international affairs.
They have picked Fox's Cuba policy as a test case for their efforts to
increase congressional powers.
The two opposition parties are also positioning themselves for Mexico's 2003
legislative elections, and are attacking Fox's foreign policy because it's the
area in which the Mexican president has made the biggest changes.
Fox has moved Mexico closer to the United States and Europe, and farther
away from Cuba and other bankrupt dictatorships -- something they see as an
affront to Mexico's foreign policy independence.
WILL IT WORK?
Will Castro's new political interventionism work?
I doubt it. The polls in Mexico show that both Fox and Castro came out with
a black eye from this one, but that Castro is likely to come out worse in the
long run. A telephone survey by Radio Imagen on Wednesday showed that 92 percent
of listeners agree with Fox's pro-human rights foreign policy.
And the clearer it becomes that Mexico's public opinion doesn't back Castro,
the more opposition politicians will move on to another issue with which to
attack Fox. Castro may try a new wave of political interventionism in the
region, but he may be too old -- and too discredited -- to rally more than the
usual crowd of old-guard leftist activists around him.
U.S. wants Reno dropped from Miami raid lawsuits
By Catherine Wilson. Associated Press Writer
MIAMI - (AP) -- Government attorneys asked an appeals court Tuesday to erase
former Attorney General Janet Reno from lawsuits claiming excessive force was
used in the federal raid to seize Elian Gonzalez.
Attorneys for the young Cuban boy's Miami relatives and protesters camped
outside their Little Havana home want the court to allow both cases to move
ahead with claims of constitutional rights violations.
A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was noticeably
quiet during arguments. Its decision, most likely months off, will go a long way
toward determining whether the cases reach trial.
The court must decide whether top government officials can be held
personally responsible for monetary damages for the actions of rank and file
agents in the field, said Gregory Katsas, deputy assistant attorney general.
''There simply isn't a sufficient connection between what Ms. Reno allegedly
did and what happened on the ground in Miami,'' said government attorney Scott
McIntosh.
To keep Reno in the case, he argued the appeals court would have to believe
''that the attorney general in Washington 1,000 miles away was somehow
clairvoyant'' about how the paramilitary raid would play out.
Larry Klayman, attorney for the outdoor protesters, likened the Cuban boy's
seizure to the deadly raid on the Branch Davidian compound and the Ruby Ridge
standoff and said the Justice Department ``cannot behave in this fashion.''
''No one is above the law, and that's the beauty of this country,'' said
Klayman, attorney for the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch. To
Klayman, the government was arguing ``that the sovereign in this country is
unquestionably sovereign.''
McIntosh described the case on much narrower grounds, saying Reno should be
immune to lawsuits for ordering the raid during negotiations for the boy's
surrender two years ago Monday.
At that time, the same appeals court had an order in place saying Elian
could not be taken out of the country while it considered the father's request
to take him home.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service had ordered Elian's relatives to
hand him over. Within hours of the raid, agents reunited the boy and his father
and they eventually returned to Cuba.
''There was excessive force used,'' said Ronald Guralnick, attorney for
Elian's relatives suing Reno, her then-deputy Eric Holder and INS chief Doris
Meissner. ``It was a direct and proximate result of their conduct in initiating
this raid.''
People at the house ranging in age from 5 to their 70s said they were
illegally kicked, punched, thrown to the ground, gassed with pepper spray and
tear gas, held at gunpoint and restrained during the raid.
No courts have found ''any of the specific actions taken here by any
officers on the ground were unconstitutional,'' McIntosh responded.
While government attorneys said no one suffered injuries requiring medical
attention, Klayman argued, ``The gassings to this day are having an effect on
these people.''
The same injuries claimed in previous lawsuits have been ''held to be
insufficient to support an excessive force claim,'' Katsas said.
The raid gave Reno a black eye in Miami's Cuban-American community, but
Americans overwhelmingly supported giving the boy back to his father. Reno is
now running as a Democrat challenging Republican Gov. Jeb Bush.
If the appeals court allows the cases to proceed, Guralnick said he doubted
Reno would face trial during the governor's race. | 
