Foreign minister defends measures to preserve the country’s legality and sovereignty
BY GABRIEL MOLINA
FELIPE Pérez Roque, the minister of foreign affairs, has disclosed documents and other evidence on the activities engaged in by Mr. James Cason, head of the U.S. Interests Section, in an attempt to fabricate opposition to Cuba via groups responsive to the interested ambitions that have always obsessed the rulers of that country.
At a press conference in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the close of this edition, the minister referred to the precedents of the trials in the last few days in defense of the right to choose the political system and independence guaranteed by Cuban laws and international treaties covering all countries, including small ones.
He mentioned the struggle against plots and whims originating in Washington over more than 40 years and emphasized that U.S. governmental hostility has visibly increased with the Bush administration, and is being carried out by more than 20 representatives of extremist groups in Miami who have been placed in key positions. The payment of the president’s electoral debts has been effected through an intensification of the blockade and other measures like those stimulating illegal emigration.
In that context Pérez Roque pointed to the seven air and maritime hijackings in the last seven months as part of actions to destabilize the country, only made possible by the practice of receiving the hijackers as heroes and giving them asylum, despite their use of arms and other terrorist actions.
A significant part of this conspiracy has come from the open and improper interference as a diplomatic engaged in by Mr. Cason since he was appointed and prior to his accreditation, with an unwonted disrespect for Cuban laws. On his appointment he told Miami television that his principal task was to unite the groups that the United States has created, directed and financed within Cuba to bring down the Revolution. He instructed them in a 10-point program aimed at gaining a space from now on in the new Cuba designed in Washington and Miami. His objective is to bring together the group and create a single dissident party. In this context, Felipe Pérez Roque showed a photo in which the U.S. diplomat appears with four leaders of the youth section of a liberal party founded by him.
Footage, photos and receipts of payments made by official U.S. institutions and signed by some of the accused were exhibited. They include a receipt for the payment of $7,154 USD paid during one year to Oscar Espinosa Chepe, sentenced in court to 20 years imprisonment.
Nestor Baguer and Odilia Collado disclosed in the film material that they were State Security agents Octavio and Tania, infiltrated into the so-called dissident groups. They revealed that that the two of them, along with others such as Beatriz Roque and Raúl Rivera, had official status and were able to enter the U.S. Interests Section with authorized passes at any time without restrictions.
The foreign minister based the detentions and 29 legal proceedings throughout the country in the last few days with the participation of 54 defense lawyers on Cason’s unchecked activity in organizing those groups, to the point of lending them his own residence in Cuba for various meetings. And in Miami, by conspiring with terrorists from the military wing of the Cuban-American National Foundation.
Felipe Pérez Roque exhibited U.S. government documents revealing the granting of million-dollar sums to finance the conspiratorial activities, via agencies like the International Republican Institute, which received $1.7 million USD to create prizes and tours for its agents. The major distributor of such funds, discounting those from the secret services that they are not obliged to disclose, is USAID, which allegedly supplies aid to the Latin America and the Caribbean. The agency admitted before a House subcommittee to having directed $22 million USD from 1997 onwards to put into practice the anti-Cuban sovereignty measures contained in the Helms-Burton Act.
"Those receiving such recompense for helping to implement that act, further tighten the blockade, and prevent businesspersons from other countries investing in Cuba by offering information to the government that has declared itself an enemy of Cuba, must be brought to trial, as specified in the Penal Code and in our own legislation against the Helms-Burton, similar to that promulgated in countries like Canada and Mexico to counteract this monstrosity," affirmed the minister.
"We have the right and the obligation to defend legality in our country within internationally recognized laws, he stated.
Finally he showed ironic surprise at the reaction of certain Spanish ministers, members of the European Union and others, who have not reacted in any way to the atrocities being committed against prisoners in the U.S. naval base of Guantánamo, or at the massacre of Iraqi civilians during the invasion, but have done so in the case of the Cuban detentions and trials, when nobody has been murdered or tortured.