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The Miami
Herald.
Cuba to renew request to join aid pact
Posted on Mon, Dec. 09, 2002
HAVANA - (AP) -- Playing host to most of the Caribbean's leaders, President
Fidel Castro said Sunday that Cuba will renew its request to join a major
European aid agreement. He also promised 1,000 medical workers to help fight
AIDS in Caribbean countries.
Cuba withdrew its request to join the Cotonou Agreement between Europe and
77 developing nations in 2000, accusing European officials of imposing
discriminatory conditions involving human rights in the communist nation.
''The situation has changed in part,'' Castro told the visitors from 14
members of the Caribbean Community. Though he did not elaborate, he said that
``some humiliating conditions have tempered in some form.''
Under the agreement signed in the Benin capital of Cotonou in 2000, the
European Union promised 13.5 billion euros, or about $12.7 billion, in aid over
five years and concessionary trade terms to the 78-member African, Caribbean and
Pacific Group of States. It sets conditions involving human rights and
anti-corruption efforts.
In July, EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy rejected calls from Group states
to include Cuba in the Cotonou pact. He told delegates that it was ''the wrong
time'' for Cuba to join and said that the EU wanted to see more political reform
in Havana.
If that was a setback for Cuba, the presence here Sunday of 13 heads of
government and a vice president seemed to be evidence that the U.S. effort to
diplomatically isolate Castro's government in the region has failed.
Of the 15 Caribbean Community states, only the tiny state of Montserrat was
absent.
The summit celebrates the 30-year anniversary of Cuba's establishment of
relations with four Caribbean states -- Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad
and Tobago -- in defiance of U.S. pressure to politically isolate Cuba in the
hemisphere.
The current chairman of Caricom, Guyanese President Bharrat Jagdeo, made a
speech calling for the normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations.
''That long-awaited act will mend the last issue of fragmentation in our
hemisphere,'' he said.
``The trade embargo imposed by the United States is anachronistic in this
era of globalization and trade liberalization and should be removed.''
Castro said his country's universities have already graduated 818 Caribbean
students since 1961 and said about 1,000 others are now studying medicine in
Cuba free of charge.
Castro: I never considered counter-plot
HAVANA - (AP) -- Cuban President Fidel Castro told visiting U.S. students
that he never considered retaliating against U.S. presidents for attempts to
assassinate him.
Comparing the small nation of Cuba to an ant living alongside the elephant
of the United States, he said Friday night that ``if the ant starts to do
foolish things . . . the ant disappears.''
Castro spoke for several hours to about 600 U.S. college students taking
part in a Semester at Sea program sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh.
The 76-year-old Cuban leader, who had appeared earlier in the day at an
elementary school dressed in his usual military uniform, wore a suit and tie as
he signed autographs and fielded questions from the students at Havana's Palace
of Conventions.
TAKES QUESTIONS
The comparison between ant and elephant came when a student asked him if he
had ever tried to retaliate against President Kennedy for the assassination
attempts directed at him.
Castro said such actions would not only be foolish but contrary to his
ideology because the elimination of a man does not eliminate a political system.
The Cuban leader defended Cuba's tolerance with religions, saying that ''in
general,'' relations with religious leaders were good.
''I observe all the beliefs with respect, though I do not share them,''
Castro said.
He also defended Cuba's policies of barring many Cubans from hotels catering
to foreigners. He called the hotels ''export products'' meant to bring the
country money that can finance social programs, not to create social equality.
HEALTH CARE
''What is more important for us? To go to a five-star hotel or to have an
antibiotic of the latest generation?'' Castro said, noting that health care in
Cuba is free and that food supplies are subsidized.
It was the fourth time that Cuba has met students from the program, which
sends students and professors to countries round the world on a cruise ship.
Castro makes appearance in Cardenas for Elián's 9th birthday
Dec. 07, 2002 . By John Rice. Associated Press
CARDENAS, Cuba - There were clowns and songs, balloons and cake -- as well
as a visit from Cuban leader Fidel Castro -- as Elián González
celebrated his ninth birthday with schoolmates Friday.
In many ways, life has not been the same for the child since a 1999 attempt
to take him to the United States left his mother dead and made him the focus of
an international tug of war between relatives in Miami and his father in
Cardenas.
FOR ALL 9-YEAR-OLDS
But on Friday, he almost seemed to be just another child in the crowd of
about 700 children - albeit one in the front row. Castro, who campaigned for the
boy's return, addressed only a brief joke to Elián -- ''Are you visiting
here?'' -- as he chatted with other children and teachers at the party in the
elementary-school courtyard.
Elián remains an icon on both sides of the Florida Straits -- a
symbol of betrayal to many Cuban Americans furious at his return to Cuba and the
focus of a major publicity campaign for the communist government on the island.
Cuban officials say they have tried to create a relatively normal life for
the boy, who lived under the constant vigilance of television cameras during his
November 1999-June 2000 stay in the United States and then arrived home to a
massive official welcome.
On Friday, officials told students that the unusually lavish birthday
celebration was for all 26 children turning 9 years old in Cardenas that day.
But few 9-year-olds have a museum dedicated to the fight for their custody
-- a struggle communist officials call ''the battle of ideas.'' Few see the
Cuban leader show up at their school and take a seat beside their father, as
Castro did Friday beside Juan Miguel González. Castro also appeared at
Elián's seventh birthday.
After a tumultuous, screaming greeting from the children, Castro joined the
students in roaring with laughter at a troupe of clowns and sat solemnly as
11-year-old Cynthia Berrio read a welcome praising his ''infinite tenderness''
and ending with her echoing Castro's traditional cry: ``Fatherland or death!''
The 76-year-old Castro, dressed in a military uniform, tossed an arm around
her shoulder, questioned her about the school and gave students a brief history
lesson of the sort Elián would not have received in Miami. When she said
students were studying the history of colonialism, Castro broke in,
``Colonialism or neocolonialism?''
Colonialism, he explained, was the 400-year era of Spanish rule in Cuba.
''Then came neocolonialism, when the neighbors to the north [Americans] . .
. made themselves owners of everything in their path,'' he told the children.
Elián's teacher, Yamilin Morales, said the boy has adjusted well
since his return.
''He doesn't have deep effects or anything,'' she said, describing him as a
child who gets along well with classmates and does well in math.
During the 90-minute party, Elián occasionally held his 1-year-old
brother, Liandi, in his lap and at one point teased a classmate sitting beside
him by tickling the top of her head with the bottom of a balloon.
HOW IT ALL BEGAN
Elián was rescued off Florida after his mother and most of the other
passengers traveling illegally from Cuba to the United States died when their
boat capsized.
The boy was placed temporarily with relatives in Miami who, backed by other
Cuban exiles, fought to keep the child in the United States.
In response, Castro organized nearly daily rallies demanding that Elián
be returned and reunited with his father. Elián returned to Cuba on June
28, 2000, after a legal battle that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. | 
