By Jim Burns, CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer. December 11,
2001. CNS News
(CNSNews.com) - The Cuban American National Foundation, a vehement critic of
the Castro government, urged the Bush administration Monday to increase its
scrutiny of Fidel Castro's alleged links to the international terrorist network.
What alarmed the foundation was a recent summit meeting in Havana, which
Radio Havana described as a "four-day gathering of left and progressive
forces from Latin America and the Caribbean."
CANF said the meeting "featured representatives of states and groups
which Secretary of State Colin Powell has identified as sponsoring and carrying
out terrorism.
The Havana meeting ended with a declaration condemning "free-market
neo-liberal globalization, poverty, unemployment and corruption." It also
denounced Washington's proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)
agreement.
The FTAA negotiations - still ongoing - are intended to create a hemispheric
free-trade area made up of the 34 democratic countries of North, Central, and
South America. Cuba was left out of the FTAA because it rejects democracy.
The exclusion continues to rankle Cuban Leader Fidel Castro, who closed the
Havana meeting by denouncing the FTAA agreement as nothing more than a U.S.
attempt to economically annex Latin America and the Caribbean.
CANF Executive Vice President Dennis Hays said, "While our national
attention is focused on Afghanistan, representatives from a who's-who of
anti-American, anti-democratic groups have been meeting and forging links in
Cuba."
"We have seen time and again that when terrorist groups work together,
their ability to undermine democracy and human rights is greatly magnified. It
is not surprising that such a group would come together on the initiative of
Fidel Castro, who for forty years has advocated violence and terror to achieve
his ends," Hays said.
Hays concluded, "As the president and his administration continue to
prosecute the war on terrorism, we urge them not to overlook Castro's extensive
ties to America's enemies abroad."
The White House had no comment when contacted on Monday by CNSNews.com.
Among those attending the Havana summit were representatives from Iraq,
Libya, two Colombian anti-American rebel groups and representatives from
communist parties of Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Uruguay,
Venezuela and Sweden.
Members of the Workers World Party from the United States also attended.
Also among the delegates was the president of the New Independence Movement
of Puerto Rico, Julio Muriente who presented Castro with a bottle of sand from
Vieques, the controversial U.S. Navy base, which will be closed in a few years
by the Bush administration.
Castro denounced the U.S. military presence in Vieques, saying, "The
United States government seeks to rule over Latin America and the Caribbean as
if the entire region where simply a U.S. overseas dominion."
He commended what he called the "heroic struggle being waged by the
Puerto Rican people to expel U.S. occupation forces."
"The United States cannot govern us (Latin America) or the world,"
Castro concluded. | 
