Yahoo! July 11, 2001.
Aid group seeks Cuban imports
HAVANA (AP) - An American humanitarian group left Cuba early Wednesday,
bound for Mexico and eventually the U.S. border after announcing it would try to
import Cuban-made rat poison as a challenge to the U.S. trade embargo.
The Rev. Lucius Walker and other members of the Pastors for Peace delegation
left Havana by plane in the pre-dawn hours, bound for Mexico, the Rev. Raul
Sanchez of Cuba's Martin Luther King Center said Wednesday.
The group last week arrived in Cuba with 80 tons of humanitarian aid. Valued
at several million dollars, the aid reportedly included medical equipment for
cardiology, radiology and anesthesia, mobile bicycle repair stations, medicines,
school materials, computers and food.
Walker, founder of the nonprofit Pastors for Peace, told reporters last week
that he would return home with Cuban solar panels and, most importantly, a rat
pesticide called Biorat.
"We are doing a reverse challenge for the first time in history -
taking aid from Cuba by way of our caravan to the people of the United States,''
he said.
The four-decade trade restrictions against Cuba bar most sales of American
products to the island, as well as Cuban imports to the United States.
Sanchez said the group was headed Wedneday to the Mexican port city of
Tampico, where they left their caravan of vehicles in which they brought their
aid shipment from the United States. The aid was transported by boat from
Tampico to Havana.
After retrieving their vehicles, the group later Wednesday was to drive
north across the U.S.-Mexican border, presumably carrying with them the rat
poison and other Cuban products.
Suarez said he did not know where on the border or at what time the caravan
was scheduled to cross. Walker could not be reached Wednesday.
Walker said the poison, made by biotech firm Labiofam, would be shipped to
parts of the United States where "diseases caused by the burgeoning rat
problem create a serious health problem.''
"There is a rat problem in the United States in addition to the one in
the White House!'' he said.
Cuba has commercialized Biorat in Latin America, Africa and Asia since 1994.
But it has recently come under fire from U.S. health specialists and two
European multinationals for allegedly being unsafe, charges rejected by the
Cuban company.
Castro's social programs lauded
By George Gedda, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON, 11 (AP) - Kind words about Cuban President Fidel Castro (news -
web sites) are heard only rarely in this town; so it was something of a
departure the other day when World Bank (news - web sites) President James
Wolfensohn lauded that country's social programs.
"I think Cuba has done - and everybody would acknowledge - a great job
on education and health,'' Wolfensohn told a news conference. "They should
be congratulated on what they've done.''
Not surprisingly, Castro's critics see things differently.
"Mr. Wolfensohn's woeful ignorance of conditions in Cuba is
breathtaking in its magnitude,'' said Dennis Hays, an executive vice president
of the anti-Castro Cuban-American National Foundation.
"In addition to being factually wrong, does he really mean to imply
that extreme repression can be justified by a self-reported uptick in
socioeconomic indicators?''
Said Cuban-born Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., Wolfensohn's remarks are "beyond
insensitive, beyond belief. Cuba had tremendous advances before Castro in health
and education. ... I'm certainly going to share this with my colleagues.'' This
was an unsubtle reference to the World Bank's dependence on congressional
financing for its programs.
But Philip Brenner, a Cuba expert at American University, said Wolfensohn
was on the mark.
"Cuba's success is all the more remarkable because that has come in the
face of U.S. hostility for 40 years and of the collapse of its trade agreements
when the Soviet Union disappeared,'' Brenner said.
Wolfensohn, an Australian-born naturalized U.S. citizen, is not the first
bank leader to praise Cuba's social programs. Robert McNamara said a decade ago,
long after his retirement as bank president, that he had "immense
admiration'' for Cuba's social programs.
Bank statistics, based on Cuban government reports, suggest that Cuba ranks
with many developed countries in certain categories. According to the bank's "World
Development Indicators, 2001'' the 1999 infant mortality rate in Cuba was 7 per
thousand live births, equal to that of the United States.
Cuba's illiteracy rate in 1999 was listed at 3 percent for men and 4 percent
for women, figures comparable to industrialized countries. And, as Castro likes
to point out, education and health care in Cuba are free.
Wolfensohn noted that Cuba was able to register social gains without the
benefit of World Bank advice. It is virtually alone worldwide in shunning
membership in the bank and its sister institution, the International Monetary
Fund (news - web sites).
Bank officials point out that Wolfensohn's words are not a blanket
endorsement of the Cuban system. He prefaced his praise with this qualifier: "If
you judge a country by education and health. ...''
The bank has a much broader definition of a country's well-being. Its
philosophy holds that education and freedom from disease are important, but so
are economic and political freedom.
A bank official noted that Cuba has chosen to improve its social indicators
at the expense of its economic progress.
Castro contrasts the social safety net he has created with widespread misery
elsewhere, putting the worldwide death toll for children at 40,000 per day.
A World Bank official responds: "There has never been a famine in a
country with a free press.'' Perhaps the worst famine of recent years has
occurred in a communist ally of Cuba's, North Korea (news - web sites).
Critics also note that millions of Cubans rely on charity, mostly from
friends and relatives in Miami, for their well-being. Also, the numbers of
Cubans who wish to leave the country, either legally or illegally, is large.
Still, praise for Cuba's social programs, if not for the system as a whole,
crops up in strange places.
"He (Castro) has done some good things for his people,'' said Secretary
of State Colin Powell (news - web sites), normally hawkish on Cuba.
The remark pleased Castro. Powell, he said, is the only American leader "who
has dared say that Cuba has done something good.''
EDITOR'S NOTE - George Gedda has covered foreign
affairs for The Associated Press since 1968.
On the Net: Wolfensohn World Bank bio:
http://www.worldbank.org/president/bio.htm
CIA's Factbook's Cuba listing:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/cu.html
Cuban-American National Foundation: http://www.canf.org | 
