Virtual New York.
Thursday, 3 May 2001 18:17 (ET).
SANTIAGO, Chile, May 3 (UPI) -- Fernando Flores Ibarra, a former top Cuban
official and a friend of Fidel Castro's, has admitted that his country financed
and trained left-wing extremist groups who operated during Chile's former
military government
The former Cuban state prosecutor discussed Cuba's influence on the Chilean
left in an interview with the national daily La Tercera, during a visit to
Santiago to see his Chilean wife's family. Flores said his country had provided
support to the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front, a far-left group responsible
for a number of high-profile assassinations in Chile in the 1970s and 1980s,
including an attempt on the life of military dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
"I know we helped them and we provided them with military training,
and we have never denied this to anyone," he said. "When Latin
America, following orders from the United States, broke off relations with Cuba,
we felt we had a free hand to take whatever attitude we wanted toward those
countries that had turned their backs on us," he added.
He denied that Cuba was behind the assassination in Chile of conservative
Sen. Jaime Guzman in 1991, at a time when the two countries were negotiating
reopening diplomatic relations.
"One principle of the Cuban revolution has been that we always
meticulously respect all those countries -- independent of their political and
ideological position -- that maintain relations with Cuba. And under the
government of (President Patricio) Aylwin, there was a process of rapprochement.
... We had nothing to do with it (the assassination of Guzman)."
Flores also denied recent suggestions that Cuban hard-liners are preparing
to relocate to Chile in the event of a change of government in Cuba after the
death of Castro. Some reports have even suggested that the former Cuban
government official already owns a number of businesses in Chile, although he
has said he is reliant on his Cuban pension and his wife's earnings as a doctor.
"Such ridiculous notions make me laugh. The Cuban revolution won't end
with Fidel, its roots are too strong," he said.
He was nicknamed "Pool of Blood" after sentencing around a
hundred "counter-revolutionaries" to death after the Cuban revolution.
He also served as ambassador to France, Yugoslavia, Sweden, Poland and Ecuador.
Copyright 2001 by United Press International. All rights
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