Cuban National Assembly president Ricardo Alarcón was questioned by reporters Tuesday at the Moscow offices of the news agency ITAR-TASS. Here are some of the exchanges, translated by Cuban Colada.
Q.: What trends in trade and economic relations between our countries are, in your opinion, the most promising?
A.: We have some very important projects and developments in the energy sector, in particular with regard to oil exploration both on the island of Cuba and offshore. I also think it is very important to develop cooperation in biotechnology and transportation.
I could go on listing all sectors of the economy, because everywhere there are opportunities for cooperation. There is some basis to do this: for many years, there was significant Russian participation in the Cuban economy. And this [background] promotes the growth of investments and the strengthening of relations between the countries as a whole.
Q.: Traditionally, Cuba's health-care system has been considered to be very strong and attractive. What prospects do you see in the further development of relations in health care?
A.: We have something to offer in this area. We can offer certain
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Cardinal Ortega says remaining 11 prisoners of "Group of 75" will be freed and can stay in Cuba (morning roundup)
Top News: Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega announced that the remaining jailed dissidents of the "Group of 75" will be freed and allowed to stay in Cuba (link in Spanish).
Ortega sounded sure that the prisoners would be released, but did not offer specifics. "Those who remain will be freed. I don't know when. Really that's not in my hands, but I have the clear promise that those who remain will be liberated and will stay in Cuba," Ortega said.
Ortega added that at least one of the prisoners may go to the United States.
The "Group of 75" were arrested in the Spring of 2003 under accusations of collaborating with Washington against the Cuban government.
In Other News:
- Reina Tamayo, the mother of deceased hunger striker Orlando Zapata Tamayo, continues to wait for the exhumation of her son (link in Spanish).
- The Christian Science Monitor ran a five-screen feature on the economic and social changes occuring under Raúl Castro's limited introduction of free market reforms. The story made the cover of the Nov. 29 edition.
- An Irish NGO has been sending piano parts with travelers to Cuba since 2006 as donations to Havana's National Workshop for Musical Instrument Repair, in an effort to rebuild the country's aging piano supply.
In Cuban State Media:
- The Cuban state media is closely following developments related to Latin America in the WikiLeaks story.
- New regulations allow Cubans to rent their homes at freely established prices and in any currency, as part of a group of reforms to facilitate self-employment, Granma reported Monday (link in Spanish).
In the Blogosphere:
- Philip Peters at The Cuban Triangle tells of his recent experiences visiting the offices where Cubans apply for new business and home rental licenses.
- Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez said she thought her cell phone coverage from Cubacel had been shut off for political reasons on Friday and part of Saturday (click here for the original in Spanish).
- Liberal blog The Huffington Post published pictures that American photographer Robert McCabe took on a trip to Cuba in 1998 and compiled for a 2007 book called "Weekend in Havana."
What did we miss? Post links to relevant stories in the comments.
Alarcón starts busy week in Russia
In Moscow on Monday, National Assembly president Ricardo Alarcón "analyzed with Boris Vyacheslavovich Gryzlov, speaker of the Russian Duma, the state of bilateral and interparliamentary relations" between Russia and Cuba, Radio Habana reported.
Later Monday, the Cuban visitor was scheduled to meet with the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Gennadi Zyuganov.
On Tuesday, Alarcón will meet with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, and on Wednesday he will travel to St. Petersburg (Leningrad) for talks "with high-ranking officials of that city."
Before leaving Moscow, Alarcón will pay a courtesy call on a religious leader, the Patriarch Kirill, then-Metropolitan of Smolensk, who in October 2008 visited an ailing Fidel Castro in Havana.
–Renato Pérez Pizarro.
Prelate, ex-inmates have 'warm' meeting
Cardinal Jaime Ortega met in Madrid on Monday with 16 freed prisoners in a two-hour encounter that was described by an eyewitness as "very pleasant, warm and emotional."
According to Radio Martí, the ex-prisoners asked the cardinal to press for the release of 11 men who are refusing to be sent to Spain upon liberation. They also expressed their concerns over their own future in Spain.
The Spanish news agency EFE quoted Ortega as saying that "the remaining men will be released. I do not know the timetable. That's not in my hands, really, but I've received a clear promise that the remaining [prisoners] will be freed and may remain in Cuba."
"Some of them want to go to the United States," the cardinal added.
–Renato Pérez Pizarro.
ADDENDUM: A list of the "concerns" of the Cuban ex-prisoners now living in Spain, as expressed in a note delivered Monday in Madrid to Cardinal Jaime Ortega:
1. The implementation of the agreements reached between the Cuban Catholic Church and the governments of Cuba and Spain,
Continue reading "Prelate, ex-inmates have 'warm' meeting " »
Cuba and Venezuela mentioned in WikiLeaks documents (morning roundup)
Top News: The whistleblower organization WikiLeaks released a batch of roughly 250,000 classified and sensitive documents pilfered from the U.S. government on Sunday, some of which relate to Latin America and will likely fuel indignation amongst Cuban authorities.
One of the most controversial documents was a directive signed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton instructing U.S. diplomats to collect "biographic and biometric information" for diplomats from a number of foreign countries. According to an article posted to Foreign Policy Magazine's Turtle Bay blog, Cuban diplomats were among those targeted.
Several news organizations, including The New York Times, El País and The Guardian, received the documents ahead of time and posted reports Sunday. Spanish daily El País' writeup notes that the documents reveal "the efforts to woo Latin American countries into isolating Venezuelan Hugo Chávez."
State-run Web site CubaDebate reposted the report by El País announcing the contents of the WikiLeaks documents. The site has followed the story, but has yet to post a statement from the Cuban government on the matter.
At the time of writing, the only document that any news agencies had reported on in detail was a cable written by Cuban-American ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, following the 2009 coup in that country. Llorens wrote that "a case could well have been made" that Zelaya had broken the country's laws by attempting to alter the constitution, but that no process had been initiated against him, making the coup against him illegal.
"Unfortunately, the President was never tried, or convicted, or was legally removed from office to allow a legal succession," Llorens wrote in the confidential cable.
According to a difficult-to-read graph on the WikiLeaks Web site, roughly 3,000 of the records released concern Venezuela, while about 2,000 refer to Cuba.
In Other News:
- Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega plans to meet with freed dissidents, whose release he helped to broker, in Madrid today (link in Spanish).
- The remains of Cuban dissident and hunger striker Orlando Zapata Tamayo will be exhumed today from the cemetery of Banes, in Holguín, and taken to Havana for cremation, Zapata's mother Reina Luisa said Friday (link in Spanish).
- The Cuban government announced it will spend $130 million to import products and raw materials to supply the the planned expansion of private enterprise (link in Spanish).
In State Media:
- Fidel Castro posted an unusually short "Reflection" to CubaDebate Saturday, in which he said that a week had passed without a cholera death in the medical centers attended by Cuban doctors in Haiti (link in Spanish).
- More than 81,000 Cubans have applied for licenses to open small businesses or rent their homes, and 31,000 have been granted, according to Communist Party daily Granma (link in Spanish).
In the Blogosphere:
- A Twitter account that appears to belong to Gorki Águila of Cuban punk band Porno para Ricardo said via that a concert planned for Saturday to launch a tour of Havana's Committees for Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) was canceled because of "police harrassment and the real fear that they would confiscate the instruments." A later tweet read "What are these people afraid of? It's just rock and roll!!!" Spoof blog Periódico Guamá posted a press release from the group.
- In a 7-page .pdf file breaking down the State Department cables released by WikiLeaks, Tracey Eaton at "Along the Malecón" found that some 507 originate from the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.
What did we miss? Post links to relevant articles in the comments.
-- Roque Planas
Cuba, Russia will interact on criminal law issues, says legal expert at Havana forum
From the Russian news agency RIA-Novosti:
Russia and Cuba will cooperate in the field of criminal law, said Aleksei Ivanovich Aleksandrov, president of the Constitutional Law Committee of the Council of the Russian Federation,
"The Attorneys General of Cuba and Russia have agreed to cooperate," Alexandrov said during the Tenth International Conference on Criminal Science held last week in Havana.
Russia and Cuba have "many interesting plans" in regard to legal cooperation and the fight against organized crime, he added, and said the Russian side is interested in signing agreements on cooperation on criminal matters with many countries, especially Cuba.
According to Alexandrov, Cuba is not just a country that has very good relations with Russia, but also a country that is preparing to modernize its legal system, which takes very much into account the institutions of law, human rights, justice, etc. .
The meeting, held Nov. 23-25, was attended by 300 officials and international legal professionals from 20 countries, who shared experiences in criminal matters.
Among the main topics discussed were the reform of the Caribbean country's criminal law, international cooperation in combating drug trafficking, and corruption.
White House blasts Wikileaks' disclosures
The following statement from the White House, issued Sunday afternoon, refers to the disclosure by Wikileaks of classified State Department cables, expected to occur late Sunday. It is not known if the new disclosures involve Cuba.
We anticipate the release of what are claimed to be several hundred thousand classified State Department cables on Sunday night that detail private diplomatic discussions with foreign governments.
By its very nature, field reporting to Washington is candid and often incomplete information. It is not an expression of policy, nor does it always shape final policy decisions.
Nevertheless, these cables could compromise private discussions with foreign governments and opposition leaders, and when the substance of private conversations is printed on the front pages of newspapers across the world, it can deeply impact not only U.S. foreign policy interests, but those of our allies and
Continue reading "White House blasts Wikileaks' disclosures" »
Episcopal Church of Cuba has new bishop
The Rev. Griselda Delgado del Carpio was installed Bishop of the Episcopal (Anglican) Church in Cuba at a ceremony Sunday at Holy Trinity Cathedral in Havana's Vedado district.
Among the present were Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori, President Bishop of the Episcopal Church of the United States, and the Most Rev. Frederick James Hiltz, Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada.
Representing the government of Cuba were Caridad Diego Bello, Chief of Religious Affairs of the Communist Party's Central Committee, and officials of the Ministry of Justice.
Delgado, 55, is the first woman to hold such a high rank in the Cuban Episcopal Church, replacing Bishop Miguel Tamayo Zaldívar, who retired this fall.
The Bolivian-born Delgado, former rector of St. Mary the Virgin in Itabo, Matanzas province, was consecrated as bishop coadjutor (assistant bishop with the right of succession) in February 2010.
She was in Washington Nov. 15-16 as part of a delegation of Cuban religious leaders lobbying for a lifting of the restrictions on religious and other "people-to-people" travel imposed in 2005 by the Bush administration. (See our Nov. 18 blog item "Protestant leaders lobby White House...")
–Renato Pérez Pizarro.
Cardinal will meet in Spain with ex-inmates
Denies he refused to meet with 'freed compatriots'
A statement from the Archdiocese of Havana:
Cardinal Jaime Ortega, Archbishop of Havana, rejects as absolutely false and tendentious the headlines that appeared in ABC and other Spanish newspapers, in which he was accused of avoiding or rejecting an encounter with the former Cuban prisoners.
In the various meetings the Cardinal held last Thursday, Nov. 25, with the authorities of the Foreign Ministry of Spain and deputies of various leanings within the European Union, the Archbishop of Havana, in addition to expressing interest in the current situation of the former prisoners, voiced on each occasion his desire of having an encounter with them, in consonance with his mission as pastor.
Next Monday the 29th in Madrid, Cardinal Ortega expects to meet with his freed compatriots, because this weekend he is conducting a pilgrimage to honor the apostle James, on the occasion of the Compostelan Holy Year.
The Catholic Church in Cuba will continue its eminently pastoral and humanitarian mission at the service of all Cubans, despite the reductionist views of a political nature through which, unfortunately, some have judged it.
Lugo, [Spain] Nov. 27, 2010.
