Yahoo! News
February 4, 2002.
Fox's party urges Mexican president to meet with dissidents on first
Cuba visit
By Mark Stevenson, Associated Press Writer. Fri Feb 1, 6:03
PM ET
MEXICO CITY - Mexican President Vicente Fox is walking a tightrope over
whether he will meet with dissidents on his first official visit to Cuba, which
starts Sunday.
Key members of his own conservative National Action party are urging him to
do so, but opposition lawmakers are calling on Fox to improve ties with Cuba, in
part to balance Fox's pro-U.S. image.
The U.S. government, meanwhile, is urging Fox not to backslide from the
stance his predecessor, Ernesto Zedillo, took when he met with opposition forces
in Cuba.
It may be the toughest foreign policy challenge Fox has faced since he took
office in December 2000, the first opposition candidate ever to win Mexico's
presidency. It cuts to the heart of Fox's two key goals: stronger pro-democracy
credentials for Mexico, and improved relations with the United States.
But a meeting with dissidents would be seen as a slap at Cuban President
Fidel Castro. Mexico has long been Cuba's closest friend in the hemisphere, and
Castro dismisses the loose groups of dissidents as misfits or pawns in the
unrelenting 40-year U.S. campaign against the island.
It's not just politics: Mexico is the sixth-largest investor in Cuba, and
Fox is scheduled to discuss the energy industry with Castro.
Nor is it just foreign policy. The divided domestic opposition would unite
to attack Fox if he damages bonds with Cuba, which are valued as a symbol that
Mexico doesn't always bend to American wishes — even if the president is a
former Coca-Cola executive with the closest U.S. ties ever.
Fox was enthusiastic about Cuban health and education services after
visiting in 1999 as Guanajuato state governor. But two of his chief advisers,
Foreign Secretary Jorge Castaneda and U.N. Ambassador Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, are
former leftists who harshly criticized Castro's human rights record before they
joined the government.
The intensity of questions about Fox's plans irritated aides outlining the
visit Thursday.
"We are not engaged in those polemics, and we do not want to get
engaged," said Gustavo Iruegas, an assistant foreign secretary.
A meeting with dissidents "is not on our agenda, nor is it planned,"
Iruegas said, but he added: "You're saying a decision has been made, and
I'm saying no decision has been made."
Fox may seek the diplomatic way out during his 24-hour visit: have no public
meetings with dissidents, but then acknowledge later he met with them privately.
It's not clear that would be enough for the Bush administration, which has
told Fox it would like to see him follow Zedillo's lead in meeting the Cuban
opposition.
And National Action congressman Tarcisio Navarrete Montes de Oca said
Thursday that he and other party leaders have urged Fox to meet dissidents to
assess limits on freedom of speech, assembly and expression in communist Cuba,
ruled by Castro since 1959.
Mexico is the only country in the hemisphere that never broke ties with
Cuba, despite U.S. pressure. While many Mexicans thrill to Castro's defiance of
the United States, few embrace his politics.
In a June interview with The Associated Press, Fox called the U.S. embargo
of the island "nonsense" but said Mexico is using its "moral
authority" to pressure Cuba to respect human rights and democracy.
Mexico's Vicente Fox to make first trip to Cuba as president, plans
talks about trade
By Anita Snow, Associated Press Writer. Sat Feb 2.
HAVANA - Mexican President Vicente Fox, a former Coca-Cola executive keen on
capitalism, planned to talk business Sunday with Cuban leader Fidel Castro
during a visit to this communist Caribbean nation.
While Fox and Castro were to discuss reviving trade during the 24-hour
visit, it was pressure by the United States and Fox's own conservative National
Action Party to meet with Cuban dissidents that was shining the international
spotlight on the Mexican president's trip.
Several opposition groups have asked to meet with Fox, but trip organizers
say no meeting has been planned. Fox's tight schedule appeared to make such a
meeting extremely difficult.
U.S. officials and his own party want Fox to prove his democratic
credentials by becoming the first Mexican president to meet with Cuba's internal
opposition during an official visit. Fox's election as an opposition candidate
was described as a democratic advance, ending the 71-year rule of Mexico's
Institutional Revolutionary Party.
It would be "very clear form of recognition ... because the (Cuban)
government treats us as non-persons," said well-known human rights activist
Elizardo Sanchez, among those who have requested a meeting.
But Fox also could enrage his host, President Castro, jettison their talks
on trade and other issues and cause long-term damage to a relationship that the
Mexican president says he wants to improve.
Several groups have also asked Fox to privately press Castro for the release
of political prisoners, a move that could allow Fox to show human rights
concerns without risking bilateral talks.
A month before taking office in December 2000, Fox promised an "intense
and open" relationship with Cuba and said he hoped to "construct a
positive road" in helping the island toward a full democracy and open
market.
Cuba for decades has counted on its friendship with Mexico, the only Latin
American nation that never broke diplomatic ties following Castro's 1959
revolution. Mexico traditionally has been an important source of trade for Cuba,
second only to Eastern bloc countries before the collapse of the Soviet Union
more than a decade ago.
Mexico today remains one of Cuba's top trade partners in Latin America and
its 10th most important worldwide. Combined trade between the nations topped
dlrs 237.3 million in 2000. Mexico ranks No. 6 in foreign investment on the
Caribbean island.
Nevertheless, commerce between the two nations dropped during the second
half of the 1990s as Mexico struggled through a financial crisis and the United
States tightened its embargo on Cuba by seeking to punish third nations such as
Mexico for doing business with the island.
Fox's visit to Cuba now "is an important gesture at a good moment"
that could kick start Cuba-Mexico trade, said Manuel Orella, commercial attache
for the Mexican government's National Foreign Commerce Bank, or BANCOMEXT, in
Havana.
Now that Mexico has restructured its economy and Cuba has passed modest
reforms allowing foreign investment, "we are just getting to know each
other," Orella said. "Things have to get better; they cannot remain
static."
The two men first met in February 1999, when Fox was governor of the central
Mexican state of Guanajuato. After a lengthy and friendly meeting with Castro
during that earlier Havana visit, Fox praised the communist government's
advances in health and other social services.
They also were said to get along well in December 2000 when Castro attended
Fox's inauguration.
"We are very happy about his visit," Castro said last week. "We
will treat him with traditional hospitality and give him special attention."
The men were to hold private talks and have lunch Sunday. Castro then was
playing host to Fox and the rest of the small delegation at a reception and
dinner Sunday evening.
Also Sunday, Fox was to visit an energy plant east of Havana, tour
renovation projects in Old Havana and visit a neurological rehabilitation
institute.
The Mexican delegation was to include Fox's wife, Marta Sahagun de Fox;
Foreign Secretary Jorge Castaneda and other officials, and Mexican entrepreneur
Carlos Slim, ranked by Forbes magazine last year as the wealthiest man in Latin
America with an estimated personal fortune of $7.9 billion.
Havana in the past has criticized Castaneda, a former Marxist scholar who
has irked many here with calls for human rights and his unsentimental book about
revolutionary icon Ernesto "Che" Guevara.
Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque last April accused Castaneda of
pushing Mexico to condemn Cuba during the annual vote by the U.N. Human Rights
Commission in Geneva. Mexico ultimately abstained, as it had in previous years.
The last time a Mexican president visited Cuba was in 1999, when
then-President Ernesto Zedillo set a precedent by publicly airing his concerns
about the island's human rights record at a gathering of Ibero-American leaders.
"There cannot be sovereign nations without free men and women,"
Zedillo said, "men and women who can fully exercise their essential
freedoms: freedom to think and give opinions, freedom to act and participate,
freedom to dissent, freedom to choose."
During that trip, Mexican Foreign Secretary Rosario Green met with human
rights activist Sanchez of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National
Reconciliation. | 
