December 2007

General Rafael del Pino wrote an op-ed in today’s El Nuevo Herald, where he examines the turnaround in U.S. policy toward North Korea and its application to Cuba.

(H/T: The Cuban Triangle)

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Ms Dianna Melrose has been appointed Her Majesty’s Ambassador to the Republic of Cuba in succession to Mr John Dew who will be transferring to another Diplomatic Service appointment.  Ms Melrose will take up her new appointment in July 2008.

CURRICULUM VITAE

Full Name: Ms Dianna Melrose
2006 - 2007 FCO, Head, Enlargement & SE Europe Group, Europe Directorate
2003 - 2006 DFID, Head, International Trade Department
2002        DFID, Head, Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative
2000 - 2002 FCO, Head of Policy Planning Staff
1999 - 2000  FCO, Deputy Head of Policy Planning Staff

Source: UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office

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While the Damas de Blanco (a dissident movement that campaigns for the rights of Cuban political prisoners) were assailed by Cuban authorities for participating in a demonstration ( leading to Cuba’s National Assembly) in favor of human rights yesterday morning during International Human Rights Day, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque announced that Cuba will sign the U.N. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and a similar pact on economic and social rights by March 2008.

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Via Russia IC:

Russia and Cuba are to share their experience and knowledge in IT technologies.

Today the Russian and Cuban Ministers of Information technologies and Communication have discussed the memorandum of partnership, which is nearly ready to sign.

The sides have worked out the issues of trade-economic and scientific cooperation. Russia and Cuba are to develop ‘electronic government’, information security, TV and radio communication, digital TV systems. Nanotechnologies are to become the main points of cooperation.

Cuban IT professionals are interested in advancing their professional level. That is why the Moscow Technical University of IT and Communication is ready to organize the exchange programs between professors and IT specialists.

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AFP reports:

Cuban security forces detained up to 15 dissidents after storming into a church’s parish hall to stop an anti-government protest, the church’s priest and a dissident group said Wednesday.

The priest of Santa Teresita church in Santiago de Cuba, Jose Conrado Rodriguez, said at least five people were detained during the crackdown on Tuesday, in the Americas’ only one-party communist-ruled state.

A leading dissident group said 15 people were rounded up by police in what it said was an “extremely serious act of political repression”.

“They barged in spraying gas in the faces of people from those spray cans, and went about dishing out blows and shouting,” Conrado Rodriguez told AFP by telephone.

He said about 15-20 patrol cars turned up at the church, outside which some 600 people had gathered, many of them from a protest march that had just ended.

Some 25 dissidents dressed in black had walked inside the church to protest the arrest of another government opponent, said Elizardo Sanchez, president of the Cuban Human Rights and National Reconciliation Commission.

“The repressors, headed by a lieutenant colonel and other state security officers, desecrated the church of Santa Teresita after kicking one of its doors open and savagely assaulting the peaceful dissidents,” he said in a statement.

Sanchez, whose organization is outlawed but largely tolerated by the communist regime, later said that eight detainees had been let go by authorities, but that “seven remain under arrest.”

He said the crackdown was an “extremely serious act of political repression with practically no precedent.”

The commission said it “hopes the government will conduct a serious investigation and stop encouraging or allowing premeditated and unnecessary acts of police brutality against citizens trying to exercise their right to demonstrate.”

Sanchez said the police action was part of “a policy of preventive repression” ahead of Human Rights Day on December 10 when several opposition members have scheduled events.

A spokesman for Cuba’s Catholic Bishops Conference said the police action inside a church was “unusual” and “very regrettable,” adding that he hoped it proves to be “a very isolated incident.”

Santiago de Cuba Archbishop Dionisio Garcia also voiced concern.

“We’re not used to this. I had no idea uniformed police could do that … we’re talking now to avoid such incidents in future,” he said, adding he would meet with government officials on Thursday.

Conrado Rodriguez said that as the dissidents were rounded up, he told the police: “I want you to explain to me what is going on here, because I don’t understand anything. How is this act of violence possible?”

Sanchez’s group says there are about 250 political prisoners in Cuba.

The regime, however insists there are no political prisoners, only mercenaries financed by the United States and people who tried to disturb order or commit acts of terrorism.

Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro has been convalescing in seclusion since he underwent intestinal surgery in July 2006, when he “provisionally” handed power to his younger brother Raul, Cuba’s defense minister and longtime number two.

More coverage from Reuters, AP, Clarin, La Journada, ABC, & INFOBAE.

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Via AP:

Fidel Castro was nominated for a seat in Cuba’s parliament on Sunday, a post the ailing 81-year-old revolutionary must hold if he wants to stay on as the communist-run island’s president.

The Cuban leader was nominated by city council officials in his home province of Santiago, a step in a multitiered process that will eventually determine the ailing 81-year-old’s political status.

If Castro had failed to be nominated for a National Assembly seat it could have heralded a decision to remove himself from power since holding a seat is a prerequisite for the presidency.

However, his nomination does not guarantee that he will remain in power since he might win a seat in parliament but then not be elected as head of Cuba’s supreme governing body, the Council of State.

Castro still officially heads the council, but has not been seen in public since emergency intestinal surgery forced him to cede power to a provisional government run by his younger brother Raul in July 2006.

In recent government videos he has appeared lucid and Cuban officials say he is vigorous, recovering and on top of political events.

Cuban legislators will be chosen in national elections Jan. 20.

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U.S. intelligence agencies have reported that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez recently used Fidel Castro’s Cuban Airline jet for his recent travel to the Middle East and Europe, highlighting the close ties between Chavez and Cuba’s communist government, according to a new report by Geostrategy-Direct.com.

Chavez said on Nov. 19, after arriving at Orly Airport in Paris, that he flew from Tehran to Paris in Cuban President Fidel Castro’s jet, which he noted was not an Airbus and he praised the aircraft as being “fast” and “comfortable.” Chavez then said on Nov. 20 upon arriving at Portela International Airport in Lisbon, Portugal, that he was flying to Havana from Lisbon the next day.

“The Venezuelan president’s use of a Cubana Airlines jet on this trip contrasts with past travels when he has been observed to fly in his presidential jet, an Airbus A319,” one official said. Chavez also traveled to Saudi Arabia.

U.S. intelligence agencies have said Cuban-Venezuelan intelligence ties remain close and are growing, with large numbers of Cuban intelligence personnel working in Venezuela. In some cases, Venezuelan ambassadors sent abroad were actually Cuban intelligence operatives.

Source: World Tribune & Geostrategy-Direct.com

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November’s Latell Report as follows:

Fidel Castro’s nearly forty-nine year tenure as Cuba’s de facto and constitutional head of state and government may finally be drawing to a close. National Assembly president Ricardo Alarcon told reporters in Quito in October that Castro may not “be available” to serve another five- year term as president of the Council of State.

Occupying that office since it was created in 1976 under Cuba’s new socialist constitution, Castro has served as head of state while simultaneously presiding as head of government in the role of president of the council of ministers. But to be re-elected for another five-year term he would first have to be chosen as a provincial delegate in regime-controlled elections. Last week Raul Castro issued a cursory announcement that delegates to the provincial assemblies and deputies to the national assembly will be chosen on January 20, 2008. Alarcon seems to be suggesting that Castro will not be a candidate that day, and therefore will be ineligible to continue next year as Cuba’s president.

The assembly president’s remarks stand in sharp contrast to what he has said in the past. Last March, for example, he told a wire service reporter that Castro will be “in perfect shape to run for re-election. I would nominate him. I am sure he will be in perfect shape to continue handling his responsibilities.” This suggests that between March and October Castro’s health, and perhaps his cognitive abilities, have further deteriorated. That would be consistent with rumors that he underwent another life-threatening surgery during the period. Castro has not appeared in public in sixteen months and his most recent taped television interview with a Cuban reporter several months ago revealed him in an obviously handicapped state.

A second ranking official also commented recently on Castro’s prospects. Communist Party Politburo member, Abel Prieto, who, unlike Alarcon is not an authorized or practiced commentator on the subject, suggested to an AP reporter on September 12 that Castro might decide to bow out because of his failing health. “I don’t know what he would say about the state of his health, and I think it depends a lot on that.” But Prieto added an intriguing twist. He proposed that Castro first “would have to convince the people not to be re-elected.”

A third Cuban leader, the most prestigious and influential of them all except for Raul Castro himself, has also recently provided some meaningful clues on the subject. On November 8, while representing Cuba at an Ibero-American summit in Chile, vice president Carlos Lage remarked on the role Castro currently plays in Cuban affairs. “He is working, working hard, every day more,” Lage said. “I’d say he’s reading, studying, analyzing, offering ideas, thoughts, giving us ideas. . .” There was not a word about Castro participating in decision making, consulting or being briefed by other officials, or preparing to reassume any such responsibilities.

Asked whether Castro would resume presidential power, Lage replied evasively. “He’s already assuming tasks, perhaps the most important one a chief of state can have, which is seeding consciousness.” All of this, from three of Cuba’s senior leaders, seems to indicate that Castro has assumed an emeritus role in the leadership and suggests too that by next spring or summer he will no longer be Cuba’s president, though he may be granted some new honorific title instead.

But all this begs the tantalizing question raised by Prieto: exactly how will Castro’s final, irrevocable abdication be orchestrated and explained? Prieto may have meant that, if he is able to, Castro would want to inform the Cuban people in another televised interview, or one or more of his reflections, of his decision to retire. Prieto probably does not really believe the populace is anxious for Castro to return. The reality, as he must appreciate, is quite the opposite. Anecdotal and other evidence indicates that Cubans generally, like most in the leadership class, by now have moved on, accepting –even finding genuine relief—in what is overwhelmingly viewed on the island as the eclipse of the fidelista era.

So perhaps Prieto was referring to Fidel himself. Will he willingly step aside? Is he mentally and emotionally competent to make that decision? Might his physical condition be so precarious that the exercise of any real leadership responsibilities could actually be fatal? Have his wife and children, and possibly other relatives in the huge Castro clan, weighed in urging him to withdraw? Might they, as has been rumored on the island, be counseling Raul and his closest associates to discourage Fidel from any thought of returning?

Most students of his leadership performance could never have imagined that an alive and aware Fidel Castro could voluntarily yield power. But perhaps now, after so many months out of the limelight, out of uniform and out of character, wearing a ridiculous red jogging outfit, not having been seen walking, striding, or standing in his accustomed pose before a speaker’s lectern, he has grudgingly accepted the inevitable.

Yet it may be just as likely that this titanic, narcissistic, unyielding potentate may have to have the power he has craved since the early 1950s wrenched out from under him. Only Raul Castro could do that, and at this point in his brother’s decline, and as troubles and dissatisfaction on the island multiply, the defense minister and acting president may realize that he will soon have no alternative but to do so.

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