By Mark Stevenson, Associated Press Writer. February 1,
2002.Yahoo!
News
MEXICO CITY - President Vicente Fox is walking a tightrope over whether he
will meet with dissidents on his first official visit to Cuba and members of his
own party are publicly urging him to do so.
Cuba and members of his own party are publicly urging him to do so.
The issue goes to the core of Fox's most valuable asset — his
pro-democracy credentials as the first opposition candidate ever to win Mexico's
presidency — and his fondest goal, that of improving relations with the
United States.
It is also high stakes for Cuban President Fidel Castro. It would be
difficult to imagine a harder blow than a public meeting between a president of
Mexico — long Cuba's closest friend in the hemisphere — and the loose
coalition of dissident writers, politicians and journalists that Castro
dismisses as misfits, or pawns of the unrelenting 40-year U.S. campaign against
the island.
This may represent one of the toughest foreign policy questions yet for Fox.
There are economics: Mexico is the sixth-largest investor in Cuba, and Fox is
scheduled to discuss the energy industry with Castro. There is also a divided
domestic opposition in Mexico that would unite to attack Fox if he damages the
two nations' ties, which are valued here as a sign that Mexico doesn't always
bend to U.S. wishes.
In a country like Mexico that bitterly remembers the U.S. takeover of half
its territory, angering Cuba would not be a good move for a president who also
happens to be a former Coca-Cola executive and who has the closest U.S. ties
ever.
The questioning about Fox's plans got so intense during a Thursday news
conference by two top Fox aides, that one bristled at reporters' repeated
queries.
"I would like to repeat my answer. That (meeting) is not on our agenda,
nor is it planned," said Gustavo Iruegas, an assistant foreign secretary. "You're
saying a decision has been made, and I'm saying no decision has been made."
Fox himself has cut the visit to its minimal diplomatic expression, a brief
24-hour "working visit" between Sunday and Monday, rather than a state
visit. Analysts say Fox may eventually find a middle road, with no public
remarks or meetings with dissidents while in Cuba, but a revelation after he
returns that he met with them privately.
It's not clear that will be enough for Fox's own conservative National
Action party, known as the PAN.
PAN congressman Tarcisio Navarrete Montes de Oca told local media Thursday
that he and other top party leaders have urged Fox to hold the meeting, arguing
it is important to assess the limits on freedom of speech, assembly and
expression in Cuba.
Mexico is the only nation in the hemisphere that never broke ties with Cuba,
despite U.S. pressure. Yet while many Mexicans thrill to Fidel Castro's defiance
of the United States, and admire everything Cuban from food to music, few would
embrace Castro's policies.
In a June interview with The Associated Press, Fox called the U.S. embargo
of the communist island "nonsense" but said Mexico is using its "moral
authority" to pressure Cuba to respect human rights and democracy.
Fox's administration has said that it plans to be more active defending
human rights, but as part of its campaign for a rotating seat on the U.N.
Security Council, Mexico also said it would represent the interests of smaller,
poorer countries against larger ones.
"In the case of Cuba," Fox said in 2000, "we are always
trying to construct in positive terms a road to full democracy."
Following interviews, the Immigration and Naturalization Service determined
the undocumented migrants should be repatriated. Cubans who reach American soil
generally are allowed to stay while those intercepted at sea are repatriated.
The Coast Guard picked up more than 1,900 Cuban migrants last year.
Pizza pilot pleads guilty in Cuba case
By Luisa Yanez. lyanez@herald.com.
A Pizza Hut deliveryman who stole a Cessna from a Florida Keys flight school
last year and crash-landed on a rocky Cuban beach unexpectedly pleaded guilty in
Miami federal court on Thursday.
Milo John Reese, 56, made a deal with prosecutors which calls for him to
serve six months in prison, followed by three years probation. In exchange, he
pleaded guilty to one count of unlawfully transporting a stolen aircraft in
foreign commerce. Under federal sentencing guidelines, Reese faced as much as a
year in prison.
Upon his sentencing U.S. Attorney Guy A. Lewis said: "We are committed
to ensuring the safety of our air space and will prosecute those who put it in
jeopardy.''
Reese has been held at the Federal Detention Center in Miami since he was
returned from Cuba Aug. 8, a week after the incident.
He will be given credit for time served, said U.S. Attorney's Office
spokeswoman Aloyma Sanchez.
As part of the plea deal, U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King said Reese
must also pay $45,000 in restitution for damage he caused to the Cessna 172
during what he called his first solo flight. The money is to be paid to the
insurance company of Marathon-based Paradise Aviation.
"That's a lot of pizzas he'll have to deliver to pay the money back,''
said Paradise's assistant manager, Brad Neat, on Thursday. The Cessna 172, he
said, remains in Cuba and is now the property of the insurance company.
The plea deal struck with Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kim Selmore and Michael
Brown means Reese will not be tried in court.
The case began July 31, when Reese's flight instructor at Paradise gave him
permission to take off in the Cessna from Marathon airport, loop around the
airport and land.
Instead, Reese, still wearing his pizza deliveryman uniform, flew the
single-engine airplane away from the airport. Then, sounding frightened, Reese
called his instructor over the radio saying his hands were cold and he could not
fly the plane. At first, authorities believed they had a pilot who had frozen at
the controls.
Reese crash-landed more than 100 miles away on a beach in Cuba, flipping the
plane over on the rocky sand. Assistant U.S. Public Defender Celeste Higgins had
told a federal judge Reese had not meant to steal the plane but flew to Cuba
after panicking mid-flight.
Reese was briefly hospitalized on the island while U.S. and Cuban officials
began negotiating his return.
Authorities quickly learned that Reese had a troubled past. He had made
headlines years earlier as an anti-brothel crusader who faked his own death in
his hometown of Reno, Nev.
Reese's wife told Monroe County authorities that he had bipolar mood
disorder and had left home in the past. He had arrived in the Florida Keys weeks
before his flight and had been living out of his car before landing the delivery
job at a Pizza Hut across the street from the Marathon airport.
While in prison in Miami, Reese participated briefly in a Florida Keys
educational crusade, writing letters to the Keynoter newspaper.
Copyright 2002 Miami Herald | 
