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By Tim Johnson. tjohnson@krwashington.com. Posted on Wed,
May. 22, 2002 in The Miami
Herald
WASHINGTON - In a surprising announcement in early May, the Bush
administration charged that Cuba maintains a ''limited offensive'' biological
warfare capability. By Tuesday, the administration seemed to have forgotten
about the matter.
A sweeping, 177-page State Department report on trends in global terrorism
summed up Cuba in 47 lines, omitting any reference to its reported biological
warfare research.
Officials seemed flustered when asked about the omission.
''It doesn't mean that it's something we're not concerned with,'' State
Department counterterrorism coordinator Francis X. Taylor said.
REICH QUESTIONED
On Capitol Hill, Otto Reich, the department's top diplomat to Latin America,
appeared initially confused when asked why the report made no mention of Cuba's
bio-weapons research.
''Is it an oversight?'' asked Sen. Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat.
''I do not know who publishes that particular document,'' Reich said moments
later when asked about the report, which Dorgan held in his hand.
''It's your department that publishes it,'' Dorgan said. "This is a
State Department publication, and we just received it on Capitol Hill.''
Reich countered: "It must be incomplete.''
FOCUS OF PAPER
The U.S. government considers Cuba and six other countries state sponsors of
terrorism, and they were the focus of much of the new report, Patterns of Global
Terrorism 2001.
The document said Cuban leader Fidel Castro ''has vacillated over the war on
terrorism,'' and has criticized U.S. counterterrorism actions as "worse
than the original attacks, militaristic and fascist.''
Castro allows 20 Basque separatists to reside in Cuba ''as privileged
guests,'' and offers ''some degree of safe haven and support'' to Colombian
rebels who engage in terrorism, it said. It noted that Cuba hosted an Irish
Republican Army explosives expert, later arrested in Colombia, and helped
protect fugitives of a Chilean extremist group, the Manuel Rodríguez
Patriotic Front.
Also, numerous U.S. fugitives continue to live on the island, the report
says.
FEW DETAILS
In a headline-grabbing speech May 6, John Bolton, the undersecretary of
state for arms control, charged that Cuba is researching biological warfare
means and has shared such technology with "rogue states.''
He offered few details, however.
Last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell clarified that the Bush
administration doesn't believe Havana has such armaments: "We didn't say it
actually had some weapons, but it has the capacity and capability to conduct
such research.''
President Bush made no mention of the bio-weapons threat Monday, a day
focused almost exclusively on his administration's Cuba policy. Bush offered a
policy speech at the White House in the morning, reaffirming the U.S. embargo of
Cuba, then cheered on Cuban Americans at a rally in Miami in the afternoon.
In Cuba, National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcón ridiculed Bush
for meeting with ''terrorists'' in Miami and said the U.S. president shouldn't
talk about transparent elections.
''To go to Miami to talk about clean and honest elections and speak against
what [Bush] calls electoral fraud, one has to be very brave,'' Alarcón
said during a round table Monday night, referring to the 2000 election, which
Bush won by a slight margin.
FORMER SENATORS
In a new sign that the White House faces significant domestic opposition
outside of Florida to its Cuba policy, a bipartisan group of 48 former U.S.
senators sent a letter to the White House calling for normalization of relations
with Cuba.
''We are the only nation in the world to have an economic embargo and
boycott of Cuba,'' the letter read, "and the clear lesson of recent history
is that if economic sanctions are to be successful, they must have strong
international support.''
Among the signers were several former senators considered hawks on foreign
policy matters, including Republicans Malcolm Wallop and Alan Simpson, both of
Wyoming, and Jake Garn of Utah. Democrats included Sam Nunn of Georgia and Lloyd
Bentsen of Texas. | 
