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May 10, 2002.
Cuban activists deliver petitions for change in Cuban government on eve
of Carter visit
Fri May 10,11:14 Am Et . By Vivian Sequera, Associated
Press Writer
HAVANA - Activists delivered more than 11,200 signatures to Cuba's National
Assembly on Friday, demanding a referendum for broad changes in Cuba's socialist
system less than 48 hours before a visit by former President Carter.
Known as Project Varela,
the signature-gathering campaign is seen as the biggest homegrown, nonviolent
campaign to force reforms in the government established by Fidel Castro 43 years
ago.
The petitions propose a referendum that would ask voters if they favor civil
liberties like free speech, an amnesty for political prisoners, the right to
start their own businesses.
Cuba's constitution says the National Assembly should schedule a national
referendum if it receives the verified signatures of 10,000 legal voters.
There was no immediate response from Castro's government to the move. Asked
by reporters in April about the campaign, Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque
said he doubted it will succeed and he accused its organizers of being on the
U.S. government payroll.
Campaign coordinator Oswaldo Paya of the Christian Liberation Movement and
two other men, identified as Antonio Villa Sanchez and Andres Regis Iglesias,
entered the offices of the National Assembly shortly before 11 a.m. with two
white boxes filled with the petitions. The words "Citizen Petition"
could be seen on the side of the boxes.
Paya, who says the project has received no money from any government or
group outside Cuba, has said state security agents have harassed the petition
drive, particularly as the campaign was near its goal. He said agents had
confiscated several thousand signatures, but volunteers had gone out and
collected more.
Carter, who arrives Sunday at Castro's invitation, plans to meet with Cuban
activists to discuss human rights and religious matters next Thursday, his staff
has said. A visit with the organizers of Project Varela is considered likely.
Named for Felix Varela, Cuban independence hero and Roman Catholic priest,
the signature drive was discussed by activists here as early 1996. But it wasn't
until the last year that volunteers begin collecting signatures in earnest.
Volunteers in recent months have verified signatures, visiting each person
who signed and ensuring name, address and national identity documents match.
Ex-President Carter to Visit Cuba
Fri May 10, 2:08 Am Et . By Anita Snow, Associated Press
Writer.
HAVANA (AP) - With Jimmy Carter arriving Sunday on the first visit by a
former U.S. president to Fidel Castro 's Cuba, human rights are again in the
spotlight, and an old joke about free speech is being recycled on the streets of
Havana.
A visiting American tells a Cuban acquaintance: "I can stand in front
of the White House and shout 'Down with Bush!' and no one will arrest me."
Same here, comes the reply. "I can stand in front of the Palacio de la
Revolucion and shout 'Down with Bush!' and nothing will happen to me, either."
The popularity of the joke suggests Cubans are keenly aware that human
rights and democracy mean different things to Carter and his communist host,
President Castro.
Carter came out of obscurity to capture the presidency in 1976, and lost it
by a landslide four years later. He has since made a career out of monitoring
elections in emerging democracies to ensure they are clean and competitive.
Castro, by contrast, has ruled nonstop for 43 years, running every so often
in uncontested elections that recognize only one legal political party —
the Communist Party of Cuba.
Though Carter's trip is opposed by some Cuban exiles, it has the guarded
assent of the politically powerful Cuban American National Foundation, which
says it expects him to emphasize human rights and not hand Castro a propaganda
coup.
When a foundation delegation met with Carter in Atlanta last week, chairman
Jorge Mas Santos gave him a letter saying in part: "It is deeply troubling
that you have entered into discussions with the Cuban regime, thereby giving a
measure of legitimacy to a small group that rules through fear rather than the
consent of the governed."
Nevertheless, it said, "we come today because we are prepared to take
any risk that might speed the day when Cuba is again free. ... We are confident
you will choose to identify more with the prisoners of conscience than with
their wardens."
Carter aides have indicated that during the five-day visit he will meet with
the same rights activists that Castro labels "counterrevolutionaries."
If he does, it will be a striking illustration of how much Cuba has changed
since he was president.
Although it remains a heavily controlled society, some opposition is now
tolerated. The number of political prisoners has also plunged, from several
thousand to a few hundred.
A decade ago there was no publicly known dissident community on the island.
Today there are plenty for Carter to meet: human rights activist Elizardo
Sanchez, reform advocate Oswaldo Paya, and Castro opponent Vladimiro Roca, who
was freed from prison last Sunday in what was seen as a goodwill gesture to
Carter even though Roca had just two months left in his five-year sentence.
Carter is the highest-profile American ever to visit Castro, and comes armed
with official permission from the U.S. government, which licenses all American
travel to Cuba. Castro, who invited Carter in January, says he wants his guest
to tour the country, and "he can criticize all he wants."
But communist officials still grow defensive toward those who say their
country is undemocratic and violates human rights.
Castro on May 1 insisted Cuba was "by a long shot the most democratic"
country in the world. Cuba's elections are cleaner than most because they don't
require campaign contributions, he said.
The State Department disagrees.
"Cuba is a totalitarian state," it wrote in its report on human
rights in Cuba. "President Castro exercises control over all aspects of
life through the Communist Party and its affiliated mass organizations."
On human rights, Cuban communists point to a broad social safety net that
ensures people food, shelter, health care and education for all.
They argue — and international rights groups generally agree —
that Cuba has been spared the institutionalized torture and death squads that
have terrorized some Latin American countries.
But those rights groups say individual rights to freedom of speech, media,
association and assembly are often denied.
During Carter's administration, negotiations led to the release of more than
3,000 Cuban prisoners.
More than 240 political prisoners are still held in Cuban prisons, and Wayne
Smith, the top U.S. top diplomat in Havana during the Carter administration,
hopes Carter's visit will lead to freedom for some of them.
Leader of unprecedented petition drive expected to meet with Jimmy
Carter during Cuba visit
Fri May 10, 1:30 Am Et . By Anita Snow, Associated Press
Writer
HAVANA - Oswaldo Paya's first attempt to cajole a loosening of Cuba's
socialist system by collecting signatures a decade ago ended with failure and an
insult painted on his house: "PAYA: CIA AGENT."
But a more recent petition effort has become perhaps the biggest homegrown,
nonviolent campaign to change the government established by Fidel Castro 43
years ago, and its leaders may be among activists meeting with former President
Carter during his visit next week.
Project Varela has gathered more than 10,000 signatures from people across
the island proposing a referendum that would ask voters if they favor civil
liberties like free speech, an amnesty for political prisoners, the right to
start their own businesses.
Cuba's constitution says the National Assembly should schedule a national
referendum if it receives the verified signatures of 10,000 legal voters.
"Many have lost their fear," Paya said of those who have signed. "In
a totalitarian country, change begins when people begin to liberate themselves."
Asked by reporters in April about the campaign, Cuban Foreign Minister
Felipe Perez Roque said he doubted it will succeed and he accused its organizers
of being on the U.S. government payroll.
Paya, who says the project has received no money from any government or
group outside Cuba, said state security agents have harassed the petition drive
from its beginning last year, but particularly now that the campaign is near its
goal. He said agents had confiscated several thousand signatures, but volunteers
had gone out and collected more.
Carter, who arrives Sunday at Castro's invitation, plans to meet with Cuban
activists to discuss human rights and religious matters next Thursday, his staff
has said.
It's being speculated that Paya will be among those meeting with Carter, but
the 50-year-old electrical engineer declined in an interview to confirm that.
Sitting in the living room of the simple one-story house he shares with his
wife and three school-age children, he said the former American leader will be
welcomed by Cubans who remember his attempts to normalize U.S.-Cuba relations
during his 1977-81 term.
"Carter is a man of much prestige, a politician yet a humanist, a
personality with moral force," said Paya, a devout Roman Catholic who
co-founded the Christian Liberation Movement, which is helping coordinate the
petition drive.
Carter also is expected to meet with former political prisoner Vladimiro
Roca, who was freed Sunday with two months to go in his five-year sentence. Some
saw the release as a goodwill gesture by the government, but both Roca and Paya
noted most of the sentence had been served.
Others likely to meet with Carter are two other Project Varela coordinators:
Elizardo Sanchez, head of the non-governmental Cuban Commission of Human Rights
and National Reconciliation, and Hector Palacios Ruiz of the Democratic
Solidarity Party. Like Paya's group, their organizations are tolerated but not
legally recognized in Cuba's one-party system.
Vicky Huddleston, chief of the U.S. Interests Section here, said the sheer
number of signatures gathered demonstrate a change is under way.
"There is hope that President Carter's visit will have an impact on
Project Varela," Huddleston said. "I think Oswaldo Paya is right, that
people have begun to lose their fear."
Named for the Rev. Felix Varela, a Cuban independence hero, the petition
drive differs greatly from Paya's first one, which simply called for a national
dialogue between the government and its opponents. During that effort in 1991
Paya gathered signatures only in Havana, from his home.
Although Paya's group first talked about Project Varela in 1996, it wasn't
until the last year that volunteers begin collecting signatures in earnest.
Volunteers are now verifying signatures, visiting each person who signed and
ensuring name, address and national identity documents match. Once verification
is complete, the petitions will be presented to the National Assembly.
While the first signers were members of opposition groups, most who have
signed in recent months are simply citizens hungry for change, Paya said.
"This is something important, unheard of, because the protagonist is
the Cuban people and because it is being done inside Cuba," he said.
Cuba: US Weapons Charges 'Loathsome'
Thu May 9, 9:24 PM ET
HAVANA (AP) - Cuba responded for the first time Thursday to a U.S. charge
that it is trying to develop biological weapons, calling the accusation "loathsome."
State Department Undersecretary John R. Bolton charged Monday that Fidel
Castro 's regime wants to transfer the germ weapons expertise to countries
hostile to the United States.
A short note published in the Communist Party daily Granma was the first
official response to the allegations delivered to a gathering at the Heritage
Foundation, a conservative research group in Washington.
"There will be an answer for Mr. John Bolton" on state
television's daily "round table" program Friday evening, the note
said. It said an "appropriate and complete" response would be offered
to the "loathsome accusations against Cuba."
Fidel 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. Bolton, the
State Department's top official dealing with proliferation of mass-destruction
weapons, said transfers to what he described as "rogue states" involve
biotechnology that can have legitimate uses as well.
The allegations appeared to add to the administration's rationale for
keeping Cuba on a list of countries accused of engaging in international
terrorism.
Bolton did not identify countries with which he alleged Cuba has been
sharing biotechnology but noted Castro last year visited Iran, Syria and Libya.
The State Department names all of them, with Cuba, on its annual list of
terrorism sponsors.
Cuba's ability to threaten U.S. security has received less attention in
recent years with Castro apparently halting support for independence movements
and revolutions in other countries.
The Bush administration last year said it was examining whether Cuba could
engage in computer network attacks that could disrupt American military
movements.
Castro last year dismissed concerns about Cuban cyberterrorism against the
United States as "craziness," saying his country doesn't have the
technology to launch such attacks even if it wanted to.
Quayle Criticizes Trip to Cuba
Thu May 9, 6:27 PM ET
WASHINGTON (AP) - Former Vice President Dan Quayle criticized Jimmy
Carter's plan to visit Cuba next week, saying it would accord respect to
communist dictator Fidel Castro .
The U.S. government has approved the Democratic former president's request
to make the trip to Cuba, where travel is restricted by law. Quayle said the
Bush administration had little choice "because to turn him down would
create more controversy."
"I would be surprised if the administration is jumping for joy that he
is going down and going to try to elevate Fidel Castro," Quayle said,
noting reports that Castro wants to obtain weapons of mass destruction.
"He is a totalitarian dictator. Things in Cuba probably are not going
to change until he leaves," said Quayle, who served as vice president
alongside President Bush 's father, George H.W. Bush.
Carter plans to arrive on Sunday, becoming the first American president, in
or out of office, to visit during Castro's 43 years in power.
The State Department has said it hopes Carter will deliver to Castro a
message in favor of democracy and human rights.
A spokeswoman said Carter would discuss human rights, a central theme of his
in the White House and since leaving office. He will not represent the U.S.
government. | 
