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March 25, 2002.
Carter announces plans to visit Cuba
AP. Sat Mar 23, 1:27 PM ET
ATLANTA - Former President Jimmy Carter will visit Cuba this year, provided
the Bush administration doesn't stand in his way, a Carter spokeswoman confirmed
Saturday.
The move would make Carter the first former American president to visit the
island since Fidel Castro (news - web sites) took power in 1959.
"He was issued a formal invitation by Fidel Castro, but he doesn't know
yet when he's going," Kay Torrance, a spokesman for The Carter Center in
Atlanta, said Saturday. "He doesn't have an agenda planned at this time.
He's just looking forward to the visit."
Carter told CNN on Friday that the Bush administration probably wouldn't
prevent the trip.
"I expect to get their tacit approval, not their blessing," Carter
said. "We can't go, obviously, without the permission of the government. My
understanding is that they will give that approval."
Carter spokeswoman Deanna Congileo said Castro's invitation stemmed from the
Carter Center's "Americas Program," an effort to bring together
leaders of the Cuban-American exile community and the Castro government.
Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation,
told The Miami Herald his organization welcomes the trip — provided Carter
tells Castro to leave power. During a 1994 visit to Haiti, Carter negotiated an
agreement to remove military ruler Gen. Raoul Cedras from power.
"If he is going the way he went to Haiti, then we welcome his trip to
Cuba if he is going to tell Fidel Castro to leave," Garcia said. "However,
if he's going to give legitimacy to a 43-year-old dictatorship, then I think it
would be unfortunate."
While not divulging his agenda, Carter said his intentions are to improve
relations between Cuba and the United States, not to deliver an ultimatum.
Carter said increasing trade and Americans' visits to Cuba would spread
understanding of the advantages of freedom.
"That's the best way to bring about change, and not to punish the Cuban
people themselves by imposing an embargo on them, which makes Castro seem to be
a hero because he is defending his own people against the abuse of Americans,"
he said.
Cuba Says U.S. Pressured Mexico
By Eloy O. Aguilar, Associated Press Writer Fri Mar 22,
9:29 PM ET
MONTERREY, Mexico - Cuba accused Mexico on Friday of bowing to pressure from
the United States and excluding Cuban President Fidel Castro (news - web sites)
from events surrounding a U.N. summit. President Bush (news - web sites) said it
didn't happen.
Castro suddenly returned home after addressing the summit on Thursday,
citing only "a special situation created by my participation in this
summit." He left Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly, to
represent him.
Alarcon said senior Mexican officials told Cuba that they were under
pressure from the United States to exclude Castro from a presidential retreat on
Friday. Bush and some 50 other heads of state attended the retreat at an art
museum in this modern, industrial city.
"We hadn't said anything about the heart of this matter until now that
we see that we have been forced to," Alarcon said. "It's unfortunate
that this unjust action of the United States has had some degree of success."
"This is not about a head of state not coming to the meeting, but
rather about one who was prevented from coming," Alarcon added.
Bush, speaking at a news conference in Monterrey on Friday night, said there
was "no pressure on anybody. Fidel Castro can do what he wants to do. What
I'm worried about is how he treats his people."
He called Cuba the only nondemocratic country in the hemisphere without
press freedom and basic human rights. "This island is a place of
repression, a place where people don't have hope," he said.
Alarcon had harsh words for Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Jorge
Castaneda, who he said knew about the U.S. pressure when he denied at a news
conference Thursday that he knew of any pressure placed on the Cuban leader.
Castaneda's statements were "fundamentally false. He knew it and Cuba
knew it," Alarcon said.
A spokeswoman for Mexico's foreign secretariat, Gloria Abella, told the
government news agency Notimex on Friday that the Mexican government knew of no
pressure from the United States regarding Castro's presence.
During Castro's speech Thursday to the U.N. International Conference on
Financing for Development, Castro called the international financial system "a
gigantic casino" and criticized rich nations for blaming poverty on the
developing world. | 
