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The Miami
Herald, May 10, 2002.
Cuban government announces Castro will respond to US charge about
developing biological weapons
HAVANA - (AP) -- President Fidel Castro will respond Friday evening to U.S.
charges that it is trying to develop biological weapons for transfer to
countries hostile to the United States, the Cuban government announced.
The Communist Party daily Granma said in a short note Friday that Castro
would make his response during the government's daily ''round table'' program
beginning at 6 p.m. (2200 GMT)
The newspaper also announced that 100,000 people had been called out for a
Saturday rally to denounce Washington's "fallacies.''
Havana made its first response to the charges on Thursday, characterizing
Monday statements by U.S. State Department Undersecretary John R. Bolton as "loathsome.''
Bolton made his statements during an address to the Heritage Foundation, a
conservative research group in Washington.
Castro's government in the past has accused the United States of using
biological means to destroy crops and livestock on the island.
Bolton's statements marked the first time the United States had raised the
possibility of Cuban involvement in weapons of mass destruction.
The allegations appeared to add to the Bush administration's rationale for
keeping Cuba on a list of countries accused of engaging in international
terrorism.
Exile leader's codefendants acquitted
Pair from Democracy Movement freed
By Jennifer Babson. Jbabson@Herald.Com
KEY WEST - In a blow to prosecutors, a federal judge on Thursday acquitted
two men who were charged -- along with Democracy Movement leader Ramón Saúl
Sánchez -- with allegedly violating federal regulations by venturing into
Cuban seas without U.S. Coast Guard permission last July.
Defense attorneys for Alberto Pérez and Pablo Rodríguez asked
Senior U.S. District Judge Norman Roettger to acquit the pair, saying the
government showed no proof that the men intended to enter Cuban waters when they
departed the Florida Security Zone that skirts the state.
''They haven't presented any evidence against these two defendants.
Remember, this is an intent crime,'' argued Pérez's attorney, Michael A.
Pizzi, saying the two men were "passengers on Mr. Sanchez's vessel.''
The men were in a boat -- My Right To Return Home -- that broke off from a
five-vessel flotilla that held a ceremony on the edge of Cuban waters July 14.
Roettger threw out the government's case against the two men about an hour
after prosecutors rested their case.
The men faced up to 15 years in prison and fines -- penalties Sánchez
could be subject to if convicted.
Minutes after the acquittal, the government subpoenaed Pérez to
possibly appear as a witness when prosecutors present a rebuttal to Sánchez's
defense.
Earlier in the week, Roettger excluded a report prosecutors wanted to
introduce from a U.S. Department of Transportation investigator who said Pérez
told him the three men decided to enter Cuban waters ''two or three days
before'' the July 14 trip.
Defense attorneys claimed that interview was ''coerced'' from Pérez
by a Cuban-American agent more than a week after the men were detained by the
Coast Guard but before they were charged with any crimes.
Sánchez's attorneys also requested an acquittal, a motion Roettger
denied. That trial could continue into next week.
After the ruling, Democracy Movement
supporters erupted in tears and hugged each other outside the courtroom. Rodríguez,
a land surveyor, and his son Leo, 24, embraced. But the men said they intend to
remain at the trial to support Sánchez.
''It's not over. There's still one more to go,'' Rodríguez said.
After days of looking grim-faced inside the courtroom, Sánchez broke
into a smile after the two were acquitted.
''I'm very happy,'' Sánchez said. "I thank God. This happens in
a country of justice.''
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Benjamin Greenberg and Eileen O'Connor argued that
while it was ''largely a circumstantial evidence case'' against Pérez and
Rodríguez, jurors should have been given the opportunity to deliberate.
Among the evidence prosecutors cited at trial: a video clip of Pérez
telling a reporter he had a ''right to go without permission to Cuba'' -- a
statement prosecutors said showed he knew it was unlawful for him to enter Cuban
waters without Coast Guard permission.
A 1996 federal regulation makes it illegal for people on a privately owned
boat less than 165 feet long to depart a security zone for Cuban waters without
Coast Guard authorization. The Security Zone extends three miles out from the
Florida peninsula.
Attorneys for Sánchez argue that the Cuban exile decided on the high
seas to sprint into Cuban waters after he noticed no Coast Guard vessel blocked
his path.
They are also contending that Sánchez -- who has not become an
American citizen after more than 30 years in the U.S. -- believed he had a right
to enter the waters of his homeland under provisions of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
Sánchez has long argued this point before the media.
But prosecutors say it doesn't give him a right to violate a U.S.
regulation.
''One of the goals of the Democracy Movement is to repeal the Security Zone
regulations,'' Greenberg said. "The Declaration of Human Rights does not
prevent a country like the U.S. from regulating its borders.''
Cuba rebounds, rebuilds from hurricane
By Maria Recio. Knight Ridder News Service
CARDENAS, Cuba - Six months after the worst storm to hit Cuba in 50 years,
the nation is rebounding with an aggressive government-led rebuilding program
that includes the first food purchases from the United States since the trade
embargo of 1961.
Hurricane Michelle raked the island's midsection with 135-mph winds last
November, causing more than $1 billion in property damage and forcing the
evacuation of 750,000 people, including the country's second-most-famous
resident, Elián González.
Early warnings and a speedy, compulsory evacuation kept the death toll to
five. By comparison, Hurricane Mitch, which caught Honduras and its neighbors by
surprise in 1998, killed 5,000 to 6,000 people. The rebuilding continues in
those countries.
In Cuba, the hardest-hit areas have been rebuilt and the ''open'' sign hangs
on once-damaged businesses. As an island in the deadly Hurricane Alley, Cuba has
been here before.
"The government of Cuba anticipated the seriousness of the hurricane,"
said Brian Goonan, country manager for Cuba at U.S.-based Catholic Relief
Services. "It was an efficient and fairly quick response.''
The hurricane caused another $1.8 billion in economic damage, almost half
from the loss of citrus, rice and sugar crops. To offset the losses, Cuban
President Fidel Castro took advantage of a loosening of the U.S. trade embargo
to make cash purchases of $73 million in U.S. agricultural goods.
HALFWAY THERE
In addition, nearly half the families evacuated are in new or rebuilt homes,
according to the government.
Still, much remains to be done. Along a strip of beach in Cárdenas, a
two-hour drive east of the capital of Havana, most wrecked homes remain
uninhabited. Some have no windows or roofs; others have no walls.
''They are responding, but it's slower than the government anticipated and
the people expected,'' said Goonan, who works with the Cuban Catholic
humanitarian group Caritas. "There's a shortage of materials, shingles,
woods, nails, bricks. That's why this can't be done faster.
''They're reluctant to admit they need aid,'' he added. "There's a
reluctance to admit there's a shortage.''
Pedro Valdez, a hotel cook in the Varadero Beach tourist area 12 miles from
Cárdenas, treated the destruction as a fixer-upper challenge. Rubble
flanks his tidy bright green home.
''We were left without a roof, a door and window,'' Valdez said. "Now
everything's new.''
Valdez, who did the work himself with material supplied by the Cuban
government, shrugs off worry about additional storms.
But a neighbor, Oreste Padrón Suárez, 62, a retired analytic
chemist, offers a different opinion as he welcomes visitors to his home.
''We've repaired it, but we're leaving as soon as the house they're building
for us is ready,'' he said.
The government has promised Suárez, his wife and his son's family two
new houses, fully furnished, a few miles inland.
But won't he miss the sea? "This is the second cyclone I've lived
through. I don't want to live by the ocean.''
According to Carlos Lage Dávila, vice president of Cuba's Council of
State, 84,000 homes have been rebuilt or replaced of the more than 165,000
Michelle destroyed.
''We've solved 51 percent of the problem,'' Lage told the Cuban newspaper
Granma recently. He predicted that reconstruction would be finished by August.
In hard-hit Matanzas province, where Cárdenas is located, the
government says it is building 53,000 houses for displaced residents. About a
mile from the beach, construction worker Virgilio Roll, 53, is applying mortar
to the concrete walls of a new two-bedroom house.
''When it's done, it will be very beautiful,'' Roll said.
The homeowner-in-waiting is Rubén Suárez. He reported that
Michelle sent a surge of water five feet deep into his old house, which has
survived storms since 1820. Suárez, his daughter and grandchild now live
with his brother.
Among others displaced were Suárez's celebrated neighbor, Elián
González, the youngster at the heart of a U.S.-Cuba custody battle, whose
family moved in with his grandparents.
FOOD SHORTAGE
Castro moved fast to solve the food shortage that followed the storm. Until
the hurricane, he had refused to take advantage of an opening in the U.S. trade
embargo, carved out by Congress in 2000, which permitted U.S. growers to sell
agricultural products to Cuba if they didn't have to finance the purchases.
''There has been a political impact from the sale,'' said John Kavulich,
president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. "It has reenergized
the interest of the U.S. business community toward Cuba.''
The two rounds of sales so far mean a ship a week, on average, sails from
the United States to Cuba. More sales are expected.
The Cubans are proud of their quick response to the storm. At Tur Oasis, on
the highway between Havana and Matanzas, bartender Alexander Ruiz said Michelle
toppled the bar's wooden structure.
"We had to build it all again. In seven or eight days, we rebuilt the
place.'' | 
