By Anita Snow. .c The Associated Press
HAVANA, 3 (AP) - A Cuban diplomat who hid out in the Cuban Embassy in Canada after being expelled from the United States over espionage suspicions received a hero's welcome when he returned home Thursday after five days of uncertainty.
President Fidel Castro embraced Jose Imperatori as he stepped onto the tarmac late Thursday afternoon. Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque and Ricardo Alarcon were also in the high-level delegation there to welcome him.
``I am very happy to be back in my homeland again,'' said Imperatori, who tried unsuccessfully to be returned to the United States to defend himself against accusations that he was the contact for a U.S. immigration agent accused of spying for Cuba.
``There is no proof .... it doesn't exist,'' Castro told a group of reporters. The communist government has maintained in recent days that its mission in the United States has never engaged in intelligence gathering.
Imperatori was accompanied on the flight by his wife, Raquel Fundora, who went with a group of about 50 well-known Cubans to Canada to pick him up.
Instead of returning to the United States as he wished, Imperatori boarded a Cubana Airline plane Thursday. According to a Cuban government statement, Imperatori ended his four-day hunger strike earlier in the day.
Imperatori was declared persona non grata by Washington last week for allegedly helping Mariano Faget, a U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service worker accused of spying for Cuba.
Imperatori resigned as vice-consul of Cuba's Interests Section in Washington but refused to leave the country. U.S. officials flew him to Canada on Saturday, but he took refuge in the Cuban Embassy instead of continuing to Havana.
In a statement released after the departure of his plane, Imperatori said anti-Castro Cubans in the United States concocted the spy accusations to discredit the immigration agency because it ruled that the Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez should be returned to his homeland.
Gonzalez was rescued off the Florida coast after a boat from Cuba sank, killing his mother, her boyfriend and others. His relatives in Miami are trying to keep him in the United States, while Cuba demands his return to his natural father.
U.S. officials have denied any link between the espionage accusations and the Gonzalez case.
In a letter to a group of disabled Cubans who rallied late Thursday afternoon to press for Elian's return, Castro said he had to leave so he could receive Imperatori ``who has done so much for the return of the boy Elian.''
After the letter was read, the several hundred demonstrators gave a standing ovation in Imperatori's honor.
``I did not intend to come to Canada,'' Imperatori's statement said. ``I wanted to remain in the United States facing up to the lies and the slanders and defending the rights of the child whatever the consequences.''
But ``a reasonable solution was found with honor and dignity for my homeland and for me,'' it said, without elaborating.
Canadian officials have said Imperatori was in the country illegally because the transit visa he received upon arrival Saturday had expired.
A U.S. State Department official said this week Imperatori could be invited back to testify at the Faget trial, but U.S. officials insisted Imperatori must first go to Cuba.
In Florida, Faget acknowledged meeting with Imperatori, but said the two spoke only about business opportunities.
``We only met for half an hour, and it had nothing to do with my job, nor did we discuss anything that related to the Immigration and Naturalization Service,'' Faget told WPLG-TV in an interview aired Tuesday night.
AP-NY-03-02-00 2024EST
Copyright 2000 The Associated Press. |