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Yahoo! April 24, 2002.
IRA and Cuban connection?
Richard Willing Usa Today. Wed Apr 24, 6:13 AM ET
WASHINGTON -- Colombia's homegrown Marxist rebels have expanded greatly,
forming training alliances and sharing bomb technology with terror groups from
Ireland, Spain, Cuba and elsewhere, congressional investigators have concluded.
The findings, to be detailed at a House International Relations Committee
hearing today, provide ammunition for advocates of greater U.S. involvement in
Colombia's 37-year civil war, on grounds that it is has become an extension of
America's war against terrorism.
On Thursday, the committee is set to take up a bill that would provide more
than $538 million in aid that the Colombian government could use to fight the
Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces, or FARC.
Colombian security officials are expected to say at the hearing that
interviews with former FARC rebels show the largely rural group has been trained
by bomb specialists from the Irish Republican Army , by Cuban, North Korean and
Iranian intelligence, and by the ETA, the terrorist army of Spain's Basque
separatist movement.
Congressional sources say three IRA members or associates were arrested in
Bogota last August after spending five weeks training FARC members in the
construction and use of bombs and mortars. The men, who were traveling with
false passports, said they were tourists. But tests on the clothing and luggage
of at least one man found three types of explosives residue. Based on travel
documents and eyewitness statements, officials are expected to testify that the
men and at least two others still being sought made several trips to Colombia
over the previous three years to train the guerrillas.
''There has . . . been a quantum leap in the FARC's terrorist proficiency on
the ground and in urban warfare, which the Colombian authorities believe is
attributable to IRA training,'' says U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., the
committee's chairman.
In a statement issued about a month after the arrests, the IRA denied that
the three men had been authorized to go to Colombia. Gerry Adams, president of
Sinn Fein, the IRA's political party, renewed that denial two weeks ago.
Critics say the claims are being used to support the view of Hyde and the
Bush administration that the United States must play a larger role in Colombia.
''It's pretty clear that under the guise of the hearing the goal of the GOP is
greater intervention,'' says Adam Isacson of the Center for International
Policy, a human rights and economic development group based in Washington.
Castro Lashes Out at Mexico
By Anita Snow, Associated Press Writer Wed Apr 24, 3:59 AM
ET
HAVANA (AP) - For decades, Cuba counted on Mexico as a loyal friend, a
neighbor that never questioned its socialist system and never succumbed to U.S.
pressures to cut diplomatic relations with the Caribbean island at the height of
the Cold War.
But a series of incidents this year has left Fidel Castro feeling betrayed
by the one country in the region he once knew he could depend upon in his
defiance of the United States.
First, Mexican President Vicente Fox met with political dissidents during a
visit to the island in February. Then the Mexican foreign secretary was accused
of inciting several young men to crash a stolen bus through Mexican embassy's
gates in Havana, hoping for political asylum. And finally, Mexico voted for a
U.N. Human Rights Commission resolution condemning Cuba, reversing a tradition
of abstaining from such votes.
On Tuesday, Mexican Foreign Secretary Jorge Castaneda called Castro's
government an "antidemocratic and human rights-violating regime" —
an unthinkable statement just a few years ago.
Fed up, an enraged Castro finally exploded this week. Acknowledging he was
risking 100 years of diplomatic relations, he aired a tape recording of Fox
suggesting that the Cuban leader not attend a U.N. poverty conference in Mexico.
Castro attended the March conference, but left abruptly after his speech,
citing a "special situation" created by his presence there.
Fox has not addressed the matter of the tape recording publicly, but
Castaneda said Tuesday that the Mexican government had "absolutely nothing"
to apologize for — and that Fox never asked Castro to stay away from the
summit.
It was clear, though, that the decades of warmth between the two governments
had ended. The topic has already generated protests and violence, and a gasoline
bomb was thrown against the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City early Tuesday but
failed to ignite.
Although Castro said Monday that "the fraternal and historical bonds
between the peoples of Mexico and Cuba will last forever," he said that the
Mexican government's human rights vote against his country last week had left
him "despicably betrayed."
That vote, Castro said, was "the last straw." He noted that the
Fox administration had promised not to sponsor, promote or support any
resolution against Cuba at the U.N. Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva.
Mexico's vote after years of abstaining during the annual exercise indicated
that Mexico's first opposition president is not willing to turn the same blind
eye that his predecessors did to Cuba's human rights record.
Fox, a former Coca Cola executive and rancher from Mexico's pro-business
National Action party, visited here in early February and became the first
Mexican president ever to meet with Cuban dissidents on Cuban soil.
Almost all Latin American nations on the 53-member human rights commission
approved the human rights measure, prompting Cuba to term them all "Judases."
Uruguay responded to Castro's comments on Tuesday by cutting ties with Cuba.
Castro, speaking on state television Tuesday, called Uruguayan President Jorge
Batlle a "lackey" for the United States.
Castro also defended his recording of the telephone call by saying, "a
conversation between two heads of state is not a secret confession."
In a live radio interview Tuesday, Castaneda alleged that Castro released
the taped conversation with Fox to divert attention from his growing diplomatic
isolation.
"Internally, it does enormous damage to the antidemocratic and human
rights-violating regime of Fidel Castro to know that the government of Mexico no
longer supports the absence of democracy and lack of respect for human rights in
Cuba," Castaneda said.
It was a dramatic change in tone for Mexico, which was the only Latin
American nation that refused to cut ties with the island after the 1959
revolution that brought Castro to power.
Dissing Duque
By Richard Johnson. Wed Apr 24, 3:05 AM ET
FIDEL Castro would love to have the Yankees play exhibition games in Cuba
next year. The Communist dictator pitched the idea to Forum Club chairman Bill
Fugazy, a close pal of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, when he spotted the
2000 World Series ring on Fugazy's finger. The American delegation included Rep.
Charlie Rangel and supermarket king John Catsimatidis. Castro - still miffed
over the defection of hurler Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez - told
Fugazy there are more talented Cuban pitchers. Later, the gringos visited Ernest
Hemingway's favorite Havana bar, where, by the end of the night, they had
everyone singing "New York, New York." | 
