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Cuba: US blocked dozens of experts from
attending biotech conference
HAVANA, 27 (AFP) - US authorities blocked
dozens of US experts from attending a major
Cuban biotechnology conference that opens
here this weekend.
Carlos Borroto, chairman of the Havana
Biotechnology Conference 2005 which opens
on Sunday with some 550 specialists from
35 countries, said US authorities' lone
exception was the permission to travel granted
renowned US professor John Benemann.
The United States and Cuba do not have
full diplomatic ties, and the United States
has had a full economic embargo on the only
communist-ruled country in the Americas
since 1962. US nationals are not allowed
to spend money in communist-ruled Cuba,
an effective travel ban.
Benemann is due to give one of the keynote
addresses at the conference, on alternative
fuels.
Briton Chris Lamb, director of the John
Innes Centre based in Britain, is due to
address the group on plant disease resistence.
Experts are on hand from Britain, Canada,
Germany, India, France, Belgium, Italy,
Norway, Singapore, Thailand, Cuba, Mexico,
Argentina and Chile, among other countries,
at the week-long event at Cuba's Genetic
Engineering and Biotechnology Center in
Havana.
They will discuss developments in areas
of the biotech field from marine to animal
health, reproduction and recombinant protein
expression in mammals, biosecurity and plant
transgenesis.
Also on the agenda are issues in agro-industry,
producing drugs in plants, and so-called
"agro-bioproducts."
According to Barroto, Cuba is keen to highlight
recent progress in alternative pharmaceuticals
manufacturing and to promote sustainable
food production.
The biotech issue in recent years has been
a sensitive one between Cuba and the United
States, which previously accused Havana
of being a biological weapons threat. Cuba
always has denied the charge.
As recently as March 2004, John Bolton,
then-undersecretary of state for arms control
and international security, told the US
Congress in written testimony that the island
"remains a terrorist and (biological
weapons) threat to the United States."
Bolton's charge came as part of a 25-page
written statement on the development and
spread of nuclear, chemical and biological
arms, despite the fact George W. Bush's
administration had gently backed away from
the same allegations after Bolton made them
in May 2002 and did not offer evidence.
Bolton more specificially said Cuba had
been successful at hiding details of its
weapons program due to data passed to Havana
by convicted spy Ana Belen Montes, ex-senior
Cuba analyst for the Pentagon's Defense
Intelligence Agency. Montes is serving 25
years in federal prison having pleaded guilty
to spying for Cuba in 2002.
Cuba, which the US State Department lists
as a state sponsor of terrorism, was outraged
by the charge Bolton made in May 2002 and
demanded that the US government offer proof.
It did not.
On June 5, 2002 Assistant Secretary of
State for Intelligence and Research Carl
Ford conceded in testimony before Congress
that Washington did not have evidence Havana
had a full-fledged biological weapons "program"
but maintained the administration was worried
about Havana's capabilities.
Havana is fiercely proud of its biotech
industry's development of vaccines and medicines
that are more affordable for developing
countries.
Cuba, which markets its vaccines and biotech
products in 40 countries worldwide, also
hopes to make inroads into new markets and
turn the pharmaceuticals industry into a
bigger international hard-currency earner.
Communist Cuba's Military Marks 49 Years
By Anita Snow, Associated
Press Writer, Dec 2, 2005.
HAVANA, 2 - Communist Cuba's military marked
49 years Friday, celebrating military successes
during the Cold War before assuming a newer
mission to bolster the island's post-Soviet
economy.
President Fidel Castro joined veterans
of the Cuban Revolution and wars in Africa
at an evening ceremony that also marked
the 30th anniversary of Cuba's military
mission in Angola.
"For Cubans, the revolutionary victory
in 1959 did not signify an end to armed
combat," Castro said. "Many compatriots
had to march to other lands to fulfill their
sacred internationalist duty."
The 79-year-old Castro said the men and
women who fought battles and provided medical
and other assistance in African countries
through the 1970s and 1980s wrote "a
glorious page in history" that should
be copied by future generations of Cubans.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces, which replaced
the military that existed before the Cuban
Revolution, traces its roots to Dec. 2,
1956, when 82 rebels landed on the island
on a yacht, the Granma, that sailed from
Mexico.
Castro and his brother Raul, now the country's
defense minister, were among less than two
dozen rebels who survived to reach the mountains,
where they launched a guerrilla war against
then-President Fulgencio Batista.
The two Castros rarely appear together
for apparent security reasons and Raul,
the designated successor to his brother,
did not attend.
After the 1959 revolutionary triumph, the
new government enjoyed its first major military
victory at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961
when the island's nascent militia forces
soundly defeated a CIA-led exile army that
invaded the country.
Although the Cuban military's focus has
shifted in the nearly 15 years since the
Soviet Union's collapse, it remains among
the island's most powerful and respected
institutions.
Active and retired military officers hold
more than a quarter of the seats on the
Communist Party's ruling Central Committee,
and generals run important ministries.
The military has assumed a role bolstering
the economy, operating a major tourism company
and a construction enterprise that builds
hotels with foreign partners. It has also
become a major food producer.
Cuba stood on the Cold War's front lines
when it celebrated this date with martial
parades in the 1970s and 1980s, pointedly
displaying its Soviet weapons just 90 miles
south of the United States.
The last Cuban troops sent to help African
nations with their independence struggles
returned home in 1991 and Cuban aid to insurgent
movements abroad ended in 1992.
The Havana-based ambassadors for Namibia
and South Africa spoke at the evening event,
praising Cuba for its solidarity in past
decades.
"Today we are a free and sovereign
nation thanks to the Cuban people,"
said Ambassador Claudia Grace Uushona of
Nambia. Ambassador Thenjiwe Ethel Mtintso
of South Africa credited Cuba with helping
end apartheid in her country.
Cuba's last military parade, held four
years ago in the eastern city of Santiago,
reflected the armed forces' diminished firepower
and its increased focus on civil defense.
The island's troop strength reached a peak
of about 300,000 in the early 1960s.
The International Institute for Strategic
Studies in London in recent years estimated
that Cuba now has around 46,000 active troops,
as well as 39,000 reservists and a militia
of at least 1 million trained to take up
arms in a U.S. invasion.
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