One of the documents signed in Moscow this week by Russian and Cuban negotiators is a "general agreement on interaction" between the automotive company Kamaz and the Cuban firm Tradex, that -- according to Kamaz's deputy director Akhat Urmanov -- would enable Cuba to buy on credit as many as 500 Kamaz trucks in 2009 and perhaps twice as many in subsequent years.
However, Kamaz this week suspended its production for the third time since November because the worldwide economic crisis has frozen the demand for trucks. During this idle period, the company hopes to clear its stockpile of unsold trucks, a Kamaz spokesman told the Reuters news agency.
The way I read this, by selling its trucks to Cuba under the terms of the $335-million credit line granted by Moscow to Havana, Kamaz is in effect being bailed out by the Russian government. It clears its stockpile, collects its money from Moscow, and everybody is happy -- assuming that Havana will eventually repay Moscow. See our Nov. 7 blog item "Sechin's back; Russia OKs $335M credit." [PHOTO SHOWS: Raúl Castro introducing Dmitri Medvedev to Communications Minister Ramiro Valdés on Friday. At left is top Cuban negotiator Ricardo Cabrisas Ruiz.]
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.
« December 2008 | Main | February 2009 »
Fidel: Returning Gitmo is Obama's duty
From Fidel Castro's latest "reflection," published Friday in the daily Granma:
"It isn't too difficult. After taking office, Barack Obama declared that the return of the land occupied by the Guantánamo Naval Base to its legitimate owner should weigh, in the first place, whether or not it affected the United States' defense capability in the slightest. "He immediately added that, with regard to the return to Cuba of the land occupied by [the base], he had to consider under what concessions the Cuban side would accede to that solution, which is the equivalent of a demand for a change in [Cuba's] political system, a price against which Cuba has struggled for half a century.
"To maintain a military base in Cuba against the will of our people violates the most basic principles of international law. It is a duty of the President of the United States to abide by that rule without any conditions. Not to respect it constitutes an act of arrogance and an abuse of his immense power against a small country."
For a Herald report on Fidel's bid for the return of the land occupied by the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, click here.
Leaders share black bread and bacon
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev on Thursday welcomed Raúl Castro to the presidential retreat in Zavidovo, north of Moscow, the news agency RIA-Novosti reported. After an hour-long chat, the two leaders went for a walk in the woods and shared an outdoor meal that included bacon and black bread,
two items that Castro said he remembered fondly from a previous visit to Russia in 1985. The get-together was informal; an official meeting is set for Friday, when several trade agreements will be signed by both men. Also on Thursday, Castro visited the Central Museum of the Great Patriotic War in Moscow and presented the museum with a small reproduction of the yacht Granma. [PHOTO AT RIGHT shows Castro and Ambassador Juan Valdés Figueroa.]
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.
5 Cubans to file appeal with top court
Five Miami Cubans sentenced in 2001 on espionage-related charges will file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, Agence France-Presse reports. The appeal is based on the trial having taken place in Miami, which, the defense argues, predisposed anti-Castro jurors against the defendants. The Cubans alleged they were monitoring anti-Castro groups in Florida to prevent terrorist attacks on Cuba, so their intelligence work was not directed against the U.S. government. According to an AFP source, the Supreme Court will not decide until June or July if it will accept the appeal and may not rule on it until December. To read the entire AFP report, click here. [Composite photo of the defendants shown here was released by the Cuban government.]
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.
TV gives Raúl a breezy welcome
Raúl Castro arrived Wednesday in Moscow from Havana in a Cubana Airlines Ilyushin-96-300, "the same aircraft used by Dmitri Medvedev and Vladimir Putin," a Russian announcer on St. Petersburg's Channel 5 said, as video of the Cuban leader's descent from the plane was shown on TV. There were no speeches at Vnukovo Airport. As Castro reviewed the honor guard in the cold, foggy day, bundled up in a heavy overcoat and wearing thick gloves but hatless, the announcer explained that the government had "extended his visit for almost one week, so he could become accustomed to another climate and time zone." Another announcer made an almost snide observation: "In the West, they call Raúl a liberal," he said. "Under him, the Cubans are permitted to use cell phones, and stores sell DVD players and computers -- the truth is, they are obsolete models and the prices are higher than the clouds. And the average wage on the island of freedom is only 15 dollars."
The last time Raúl Castro traveled to Moscow, it was for the funeral of Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko, First Secretary of the Communist Party, in March 1985. Castro is scheduled to meet informally with President Medvedev on Thursday. For Miami Herald coverage, click here.
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.
CANF's Sandy Acosta Cox moves to Echo Cuba
The Cuban-American National Foundation’s Sandy Acosta Cox has left her post as spokeswoman of the exile group. She’s now raising funds for Echo Cuba, a faith-based organization that helps Cuba’s independent churches.
Acosta Cox, 31, had joined the foundation just under a year ago after finishing a masters degree in international politics and human rights at American University. She also worked at the University of Miami’s Latin American Studies center, Freedom House and for Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.
“Echo Cuba is a phenomenal faith-based institution that helps independent churches in Cuba run community based programs, such as micro-enterprise projects, relief efforts, social and human services, and organizational capacity building,” she said. “I will be writing a lot of proposals to foundations, and this organization has a pretty good track record of having funding in the past and a substantive body of work.’’
Echo Cuba is an outfit run by Teo Babun.
- Frances Robles
National Security Archive: Cuba talks go way back. Docs prove it.
There's been a lot of brouhaha over President Barack Obama's willingness to talk to the Castro government. But the National Security Archive says new documents posted on its site show talks have been going on way back. Henry Kissinger, newly declassified records show, was even willing to normalize relations.
Kornbluh and American University's William LeoGrande authored a piece on the subject titled Pres. Obama: Here is what you should do about CUBA in the latest issue of Cigar Aficionado magazine. There's a half-page ad in today's New York Times promoting the issue, which also includes a a memo about the embargo written by Cuba expert Julia Sweig.
We talked to the archive's senior analyst Peter Kornbluh.
Q: What's the most surprising element you found in these documents?
The documents reveal some historic truths: Past presidents have seen diplomacy with Cuba as both possible and preferable to continuing acrimony. The Cuban leadership has always been interested in talks. Che Guevara first came up with the indirect approach of using what he called talks on "secondary issues" such has immigration and counterterrorism to build momentum toward a broader agenda of better relations. Even a Republican administration such as Gerald Ford's have engaged in a substantive effort to normalize ties.
Most surprising is that more than 34 years after Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's aides recommended, in secret memoranda, moving quickly to normalize diplomatic relations and getting "an intrinsically trivial issue" off of the U.S. and regional agenda, the Cuba issue still plagues U.S. policymakers.
Q: Has this been revealed before?
I have written about this history before, in magazines like the New York Review of Books and Cigar Aficionado. But the Kissinger documents have never before been posted on the internet for an international audience to evaluate. They show that U.S. officials thought through a scenario for ending what Kissinger called the "perpetual antagonism" in U.S.-Cuban relations, and fundamentally changing the policy. Obama faces a similar situation to what Kissinger faced then: a Congress restless to begin lifting U.S. sanctions on Cuba, and a Latin American community pressuring for a real change in Washington's approach to Havana. So the Kissinger blueprint remains relevant to today as the new administration confronts the challenge to change Cuba policy.
Q: Are you expecting Obama to increase that level of negotiation you outline in your piece?
I expect that Obama's aides will be taking a close look at what worked and didn't work in dialogue efforts of the past as they consider how the President will eventually fullfill his campaign pledge for direct diplomacy with Cuban leaders and to "turn the page and begin to write a new chapter in U.S.-Cuba policy." The main lesson is that discussions with Cuba cannot be preconditioned with all sorts of demands for internal changes on the island. Normalization should be a starting point for talks, rather than an end point of a series of quid pro quos. Previous presidents have tried and failed with that approach. Obama will eventually take a strong diplomatic approach, as well as unilateral initiative, to build a relationship with Cuba that meets U.S. interests in peace and harmony in the region.
- Frances Robles
Raúl to visit Russia, Jan. 8-Feb. 4
Raúl Castro will be in Russia from Jan. 28 to Feb. 4, the Russian media reported Monday, citing Kremlin sources. An official ceremony is set for Jan. 30, at which Castro and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev are expected to sign several cooperation agreements. The Russian news agency ITAR-TASS quoted Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin as saying that Castro's visit "will be historical. His previous visit was in 1984. If in 2009 it becomes possible to carry out this visit, it means that the historical conditions [between the two countries] have changed." Sechin's allusion was to the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, which left Cuba economically adrift for years thereafter. See our Jan. 21 blog item "Russia, Cuba to tighten economic ties." [PHOTO SHOWS: Medvedev and Castro in Havana in late November.]
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.
Minister joins bid to reclaim Gitmo
Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque on Friday welcomed President Obama's move to shut down the Guantánamo naval base's prison but said it was not enough. "We hope that this will be the first step to a process whereby we can regain that land that belongs to us," Pérez Roque said, during a visit to Managua. "It is a decision that, logically, we see as good, but, from the point of view of Cuba, it is not enough. What remains now is to close the naval base the United States has there, which [Washington] doesn't need for any type of military use," he said, according to a Cuban Foreign Ministry transcript.
"We hope to exercise sovereignty once more over that site in our territory," the minister added.
Pérez Roque followed the lead of Raúl Castro, who, in an interview Thursday with the Russian news agency ITAR-TASS, said: "We demand that not only the prison but also the base be closed and the territory it occupies be returned to its legal owner -- the Cuban people. The base has no military value for [the Americans]. From a military point of view, it is a real mousetrap."
Two months ago, in a conversation with actor Sean Penn, Raúl Castro said he would be willing to meet with Obama, "and at the end of the meeting we could give the president a gift. We could send him home with the American flag that waves over Guantánamo Bay."
The return to Cuba of the land on which the naval base was built had not been broached officially for a while. But on Nov. 8, 2008, in an article about Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, Fidel Castro wrote that nobody should even imagine "that we would renounce the return of up to the last square meter of the territory of Guantánamo, occupied by force in our country."
In a speech in Managua on Jan. 11, 1985, Fidel Castro said that Cuba has "the moral and legal right to demand its return. We have made the claim in the moral and legal way. We do not intend to recover it with the use of arms. [...] If some day it is ours, it will not be by the use of force, but by the advance of the consciousness of justice in the world." [UPDATE: Pérez Roque reiterated his statements at a press conference Jan. 28. Click here.]
---Renato Pérez Pizarro.
