Chronicle on Cuba - February 2005

US-Cuba Relations

February 1: Fidel Castro said that US President George W. Bush appears deranged, and that Cubans would much rather live in the Caribbean island's "heaven" than try and survive in Bush's corrupt, capitalist "hell." In comments aired live on state-run television, Castro told thousands of teachers attending an international pedagogy conference in Havana that he closely watched Bush's inauguration speech and saw "the face of a deranged person." "If only it were just the face," he said, to roars of applause by educators in the audience hailing from 52 countries around the world. Castro criticized Bush's government, linking it to corruption and torture. He then defended Cuba's socialist system, which Bush's administration has openly said should be replaced with a democratic, free-market one. "This country is heaven, in the spiritual sense of the word," he said. "And I say (to Bush), we prefer to die in heaven than survive in hell." (AP, 1/2/05)

February 1: Fidel Castro said the only way the United States could overthrow his communist government was by the nuclear destruction of Cuba. Castro, whose one-party state was recently labeled an "outpost of tyranny" by US President George W. Bush's administration, said Cuba would resist an American invasion like Vietnam. "I hope I'm wrong (...) but if they make the mistake of attacking and invading this country, I recommend Mr. Bush had better launch 50 nuclear weapons and exterminate us all," Castro said in a speech. "I assure you this country could be exterminated," he said. "Extermination by weapons of mass destruction is the only way," he said. "We are not afraid." "Nobody was frightened here when hundreds of nuclear arms were pointing at this country in 1962," he added, in reference to the missile crisis in which Washington and Moscow came to the brink of nuclear war over Soviet missiles deployed in Cuba. (Reuters, 1/2/05)

February 1: Despite a much-publicized agreement signed last year for the government of Cuba to buy $10 million in goods from South Carolina companies, little has been done since then to implement the deal. Three state officials, including Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer and then-Agriculture Commissioner Charles Sharpe, and two shipping executives returned from a controversial trip to Havana with a deal that included the officials agreeing to urge the state's congressional delegation to push for more open trade with the communist nation. "There were some people who were unhappy, but we weren't endorsing Castro," said Representative Chip Limehouse (Republican-Charleston), who went on the trade trip. Increased political tensions between Cuba and the United States could be to blame for the deal falling through. "For trade to flourish, we have to get the political situation better," Limehouse said. "It seems like every foot we go forward, we take a step or two backward." (AP, 2/2/05)

February 2: The United States took a dim view of an EU suspension of diplomatic sanctions on Cuba, calling productive dialogue with Havana "simply not possible." "We remain concerned that suspending the restrictive measures without achieving the goals for which they were put into place will embolden regime hardliners and dishearten the peaceful opposition," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. The United States will "encourage" the European Union to actively support Cuba's peaceful opposition and to "make more vigorous efforts to focus international attention on Cuba's egregious human rights record," Boucher said. "Our experience in terms of watching what's happened with Cuba and the Castro regime is that a productive dialogue with the Castro regime is simply not possible," Boucher added. "Past efforts by the Europeans and others have yielded neither political nor economic reforms. And therefore we believe that the kind of pressure that has existed in the past is the only approach, the best approach of trying to secure change in Cuba." (AFP, 2/2/05)

February 3: US farm product sales to Cuba, which began only in 2002, have now topped $1 billion, the head of Cuba's food import agency said. That trade appears to be growing despite a marked deterioration in always tense bilateral relations. "We have paid $1,043 billion to date," Alimport Chairman Pedro Alvarez said after signing a $22 million contract for 10,000 tonnes of milk with Dairy America of Arizona. Alimport includes shipping and other costs in its figures. Alvarez said most of the 163,000 tonnes (tons) of agricultural products purchased from the United States under a 2000 US measure that allowed cash-only sales were shipped by US companies. Alimport reported Cuba had become the 22nd largest US agricultural market, with sales of $474 million last year. (Reuters, 3/2/05)

February 3: The President of the Cuban Parliament, Ricardo Alarcon, denounced Washington's maneuvers to destroy the island's educational system and its example of equality and social justice. In a conference during the International Pedagogy 2005 conference underway in Havana, Alarcon explained the objectives of a document drafted by the US State Department entitled: "Plan for the Assistance of a Free Cuba". The Cuban Parliamentarian pointed out that the text ignores Cuba's priority in education since it claims that one of Washington's tasks will be to teach the Cuban people to read and write as well as train its teachers and professors due to their low professional quality. (Radio Habana Cuba, 3/2/05)

February 3: New US government moves to reinterpret the payment system under a 2000 law allowing sales of American farm goods to communist Cuba threatens to slow the limited but growing trade relationship of recent years, the island's top food import official said. If the American government ultimately decides no US food products can leave port until paid for in advance by the Cuban government, deals ''could be dramatically reduced'' this year, said Pedro Alvarez, chairman of the Cuban food import firm Alimport. ''This harms American producers as much or more than Cuba itself,'' said Alvarez, speaking at a news conference called to announce a US$22 million contract for the island to buy milk from Dairy America of California. (The Miami Herald, 4/2/05)

February 3: A videoconference celebrated as a first has linked Cubans in Miami and Havana for a discussion on a new book on the island's post-Castro economy. The University of Miami's Institute of Cuban and Cuban American Studies arranged the teleconference with Kelly Keiderling, a public affairs officer at the US diplomatic mission in Havana. ''It's a pleasure to be part of this collaboration, that for the first time is possible,'' said Martha Beatriz Roque, a leading Cuban dissident. Keiderling invited about 50 Cubans to her home in Havana to take part in the videoconference with a Miami panel on the new book by Jorge Sanguinetty, a Miami economist who headed Cuba's National Investment Planning Department from 1963 to 1966. He has also advised former Soviet-bloc nations on economic reforms. (The Miami Herald, 4/2/05)

February 3: US Southern Command chief, General Bantz Craddock, said his country has no intention to invade Cuba. When asked in Tegucigalpa whether his country was planning to invade Havana, the general replied with a sparse “No.” Fidel Castro recently said that the US would consider military operations against the island. (AP, 4/2/05)

February 4: Governor Kathleen Blanco will lead a state delegation to Cuba from March 8 to 11 in an effort to win business for Louisiana ports and companies seeking to expand trade with the communist island nation. A spokeswoman for the governor said no meetings were planned with Fidel Castro during her visit, which was announced previously with no firm date. The relaxation of a trade embargo three years ago allows the sale of US food, agricultural, medical and some wood products to Cuba. (The Times Picayune, 4/2/05)

February 4: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has decided to keep Roger Noriega as the top US diplomat for Latin America despite opposition by some members of Congress, officials and legislators say. Analysts saw the decision as a victory for Cuban-American lawmakers who lobbied on Noriega's behalf and as a sign that the second Bush administration will probably take a harder line against Cuba and Venezuela. Noriega has supporters, especially South Florida Republican Representatives Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. "I consider him a true soldier in favor of liberty and justice," Ros-Lehtinen said. "He's doing everything possible to boost the Bush doctrine in Latin America, combining democracies with solid market economies." (The Miami Herald, 4/2/05)

February 7: Eloy Gutiérrez-Menoyo, a controversial Cuban exile who returned to the island two years ago to join the dissident movement, said that the US Treasury Department warned he could be prosecuted or fined for living in Cuba. Gutiérrez-Menoyo, a permanent resident of the United States, after 17 years in Miami, announced during a trip to Cuba in August 2003 that he would remain there as a dissident with hopes of eventually opening a Cambio Cubano office . His legal immigration status in Cuba remains in limbo and he has been unable to open the office. Now US government officials say he could be violating the US embargo against Cuba. In November, the Treasury Department sent Gutiérrez-Menoyo a letter that said the department's Office of Foreign Assets Control "has reason to believe" that he is subject to US jurisdiction because he is a permanent resident. A representative of the US Interests Section in Havana gave Gutiérrez-Menoyo the Treasury Department letter late last year. According to the letter, Gutiérrez-Menoyo "presumably" went to Cuba in 2003 under a general license from the Treasury Department that allowed him to visit family, but new Treasury regulations that went into effect on June 30, 2004 require people traveling from the U.S. to Cuba to visit family to obtain a specific license. They are also limited to one visit every three years. Eloy Gutiérrez-Menoyo has returned to the United States twice since August 2003, his daughter, Patricia Gutiérrez-Menoyo, said. He made the first visit in July 2004 and has since renewed his expired green card, she said. (Sun Sentinel, AP, 8/2/04)

February 8: Foreign Affairs Professor at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Piero Gleijeses, said that the five Cuban political prisoners incarcerated in the United States "are the victims of Washington's hatred against the Cuban Revolution." The US scholar's views and considerations regarding the case of the Cuban Five are included in a 20-chapter book written by different international public figures under the coordination of Salim Lamrani. That book will be launched during the 14th Havana International Book Fair taking place in the Cuban capital. (Radio Habana Cuba, 8/2/05)

February 8: The State Department denounced the selection of Cuba and Zimbabwe for a panel that will decide on the agenda for a meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission next month. "The United States believes that countries that routinely and systematically violate the rights of their citizens should not be selected to review the human rights performance of other countries," State Department press office Tom Casey said. Besides Cuba and Zimbabwe, the other members of the so-called "Working Group on Situations" are Hungary, the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia. "Despite the inappropriate membership of Cuba and Zimbabwe, we look for the working group to conduct its procedures in a balanced and transparent manner," Casey said. (AP, 8/2/05)

February 9: A group of US senators presented a bill to Congress seeking to clarify a law that permits the sale of agricultural produce and food to Cuba, thus ending a controversy that has jeopardized authorized trade with the communist island. The bill, presented by some 20 Republican and Democratic senators, clarifies details of 2001 legislation that allowed US firms to sell medicines and agricultural produce to Cuba as long as the government of Fidel Castro pays cash in advance. A dispute in interpreting the law had pitted US exporters since November with the US Treasury Department, which had asked banks to block sale of foodstuffs and medicine to Cuba. "The Agricultural Export Facilitation Act (2005) will ensure that (agricultural producers ... all over the country) can keep the market and continue to sell their products to Cuba as they have done without incident for several years," said Senator Max Baucus, ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee. "Today, I will not allow bureaucrats to reinterpret Congress' original intent and obstruct already established legal trade," said Senator Larry Craig, as the bill was unveiled. The bill defines cash payment in advance as receipt of payment before transfer of title and release of physical control of goods to the purchaser. (Sun Sentinel, 9/2/05)

February 9: The American Farm Bureau Federation said that it supports a bill introduced in the Senate to facilitate and increase US agricultural exports to Cuba. “We applaud these changes, which would clarify Congress’ intent when it enacted trade sanctions reforms in 2000 and streamline the procedure that allows US farmers and ranchers to export their products to Cuba,” said AFBF President Bob Stallman. “Congress clearly meant to open the Cuban market for farm exports, and this bill is a positive next step.” (Southwest Nebraska News, 9/2/05)

February 10: Through gestures and bits of each other's language, teenagers Mara Blesoff of the United States and Lessys Rusindo of Cuba communicated animatedly during a break in their softball game. ''We were talking about the party tomorrow night and she wanted to know if I knew how to dance,'' 13-year-old Mara said of her new 19-year-old friend. "I really can't, so maybe she can teach me.'' Mara is among 10 Chicago-area girls who, along with their coaches and many of their parents, are in Cuba on a US-government approved sports exchange -- one of the few remaining categories under which Americans can visit the communist island legally. (The Miami Herald, 10/2/05)

February 10: Cuba has purchased 125,000 tonnes of US wheat "over the past several days," according to the US Wheat Associates, an industry group that promotes sales of American wheat abroad. US Wheat Associates officials, accompanying wheat growers from Oklahoma and Texas, have been in Cuba this week meeting with food-buying officials. Details on delivery dates for the wheat were not available, according to a US Wheat Associates official. According to the group, "More purchases (of wheat) are being negotiated" by Cuba. (Reuters, 10/2/05)

February 10: Washington's Festival Center hosted packed audiences over the weekend to the premier of the documentary "Mission against Terror." AIN News Agency notes that the film, produced and directed by Bernie Dwyer of Radio Havana Cuba and Cuban TV producer Roberto Ruiz, profiles the incarceration of the so-called "Cuban Five" in prisons in the United States. (Radio Habana Cuba, 10/2/05)

February 11: An administrative law judge fined a Michigan couple $5,250 for traveling to Cuba in 2001. The US Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control had asked Administrative Law Judge Irwin Schroeder to fine Michael and Andrea McCarthy $9,750. The McCarthys, of Port Huron, went to Cuba through Canada in April 2001. They are devout Catholics who considered the trip a missionary effort as well as a vacation. They brought medicine to a group of nuns in Havana, as they had done on similar trips to Mexico and Haiti, and participated in religious services. "Here are five thousand reasons to repeal the ban on travel by Americans to Cuba," Sarah Stephens, an advocate for the couple from the Center for International Policy, which opposes the Cuba travel ban, said in a written statement. (AP, 11/2/05)

February 12: Two US residents have been detained in Cuba after a friend reported them missing on their 22-foot boat, but how they reached Cuban waters is unclear. A man called the Coast Guard on February 5 to report his friends were in trouble at sea. He "had been in contact with the two individuals by satellite phone. We talked to this friend to try to get a position. He was telling us they were in distress and adrift, basically broken down," said Coast Guard Lt. Tony Russell. The initial location he offered was near Crooked Island in the Bahamas, but "that just didn't make any sense," Russell said. "The second location given was 18 miles off the coast of Cuba, and then 45 minutes later it was 1,200 yards off the coast of Cuba." That's when the man said his friends had been stopped by Cuban border guards. The boaters' names have not been released. Russell had no explanation for the boat trip, but US-registered boats are required to get permits to enter the waters off Cuba. (AP, 12/2/05)

February 12: Fidel Castro warned the United States against plotting to kill his most important ally, Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez. "I say to world public opinion: if they assassinate Chavez, the responsibility will fall squarely on the president of the United States, George W. Bush,'' Castro said. The Cuban leader, who was the target of CIA assassination plots after his 1959 revolution steered Cuba toward Soviet Communism, gave no evidence that Chavez's life was in danger. But he said the United States would be responsible for killing Chavez even if the Venezuelan military was to carry out the assassination. He added: "If they can eliminate him, they will.'' "This comes from a survivor. I have survived,'' he said in a nearly six-hour speech that began late at night and lasted into the early hours of next day. (The New York Times, 12/2/05)

February 13: In a move likely to further aggravate tensions between Cuba and the United States, the US government is offering millions of dollars to American universities and other groups under a program aimed at ending Cuba's one-party rule. Many schools traditionally have avoided the political battle between Washington and Havana. But that is beginning to change. Chicago's Loyola University last fall became one of several universities to accept such a grant, $425,000, which university officials say will be used to continue a program that teaches English to adults in a poor Havana neighborhood. US officials argue the money that funds such programs is crucial to building political opposition to Fidel Castro on the island and preparing for what they describe as Cuba's inevitable transition from dictatorship to democracy. (Chicago Tribune, 13/2/05)

February 14: During the past year, the Bush administration has exerted pressures and imposed fines on several foreign banks doing business with Cuba. Specifically designed to prevent Havana from depositing US dollars abroad to fulfill its trade obligations, US enforcement actions are part of a broader attempt to further disrupt Cuba's limited access to international financing and hasten the demise of Fidel Castro's decades-long rule over the island. According to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), claims of foreign banks on Cuba, which refer to financial assets such as loans, debt securities and equities, rose more than 30 percent between 2000 and 2003. By September 2003, these claims totaled $1.97 billion, with European banks accounting for about 85 percent of all international credit to Cuba. Last May, the U.S. Federal Reserve imposed a fine of $100 million on USB, Switzerland's largest bank, for allegedly making transactions in American dollars with Cuba in violation of U.S. sanctions. Additional fines were levied against the Italian group Banca Commerciale Italiana and the Spanish bank Santander for illegally transferring funds to the island. As the United States stepped up pressures on banking institutions to curtail their relations with the Castro government, one would expect a substantial reduction in the flow of international credit to Cuba. (Orlando Sentinel, 14/2/05)

February 14: A couple will appeal a judge's fine of $5,250 for a trip to Cuba they say had a humanitarian purpose, their attorney said. Attorney Kurt Berggren said the fine was excessive, and he will file the appeal for Michael and Andrea McCarthy. The McCarthys, of Port Huron, are devout Roman Catholics who traveled to Cuba in 2001 for a vacation but also took medicines with them and participated in religious services. (The Seattle Post, 14/2/05)

February 14: Cuba became the United States' 25th-largest agricultural export market in 2004 with food purchases jumping 55 per cent, despite a decline recently as always tense relations deteriorated further, a report showed. "With the completion of the 2004 data, Cuba's purchases of $391.9 million ranks the country as the 25th largest agricultural market for U.S. companies, compared with 35th in 2003, 50th in 2002, and 144 in 2001," said John Kavulich, president of the US-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. The New York-based organization monitors trade between the two countries and issues an annual summary based on US government data and other sources. (Reuters, 15/2/05)

February 15: Nearly 150 Cuban refugees convicted of crimes and imprisoned in the years following the 1980 Mariel boatlift have been released. The Miami Herald, citing an unnamed federal official, reported that at least 147 Mariel convicts have been released since last month's Supreme Court decision that found the indefinite detention of illegal immigrants is unconstitutional. About 600 Mariel convicts remain in prisons and jails nationwide, said Manny Van Pelt, spokesman for the federal Department of Homeland Security. Most are expected to be released in the next few months, he said. (AP, 15/2/05)

February 16: Fidel Castro called the US-led war in Iraq a "brutal bombing spectacle," and criticized the Bush administration for its spending on the war. Castro said the billions of dollars being spent in Iraq "won't cure AIDS, won't cure any disease, won't cure anybody." Meanwhile, he said in the speech to a workers' congress in Havana, Cuba exports thousands of doctors to needy countries. "Mr. Bush put forth 15 billion dollars, and with that the world moved on to the stage of the Iraq war, that brutal bombing spectacle," Castro said in remarks lasting nearly three hours. "But what is needed over there is a man, a revolutionary doctor who can save lives. And that's what we have." (The Washington Post, 18/2/05)

February 17: Immigration advocates claimed US federal immigration officials were doing too little to help newly released Mariel detainees adjust to life outside a cell. Federal officials said they've heard only isolated complaints, but they acknowledge that more may come as more Mariel refugees are released in the next few months. Celestino Leyva Núñez and Cárlos Bueno Rodríguez said they are Cuban Mariel refugees released under the recent Supreme Court ruling, men who spent long months in detention and were finally freed -- only to become homeless. ''The Cuban Mariels are being released without work cards to communities where they have no ties and have no desire to live,'' said Sue Weishar, director of immigration and refugee services for Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans. "It is not fair to the Cubans and it is not fair to the communities.'' (The Miami Herald, 17/2/05)

February 17: US Central Intelligence Agency Director Porter Goss identified Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Haiti and Cuba as “potential flashpoints” or areas of instability in Latin America in 2005. In the case of Venezuela, Goss said that (President Hugo) “Chávez is consolidating his hold on power by using technically legal tactics to target his opponents and is meddling in the region, supported by Fidel Castro.” (La Crónica de Hoy, 17/2/05)

February 17: The US government's strict enforcement of a four-year-old law allowing farm sales in Cuba is threatening to slow the limited but expanding trade between the countries, a top Cuban official said. Late last year, American agricultural companies found that payments made by Cuba were not credited to US bank accounts while US officials studied whether shipping the products before full payment is received constitutes a line of credit. If the American government decides no US food products can leave port until paid for in advance by the Cuban government, deals ''could be dramatically reduced,'' said Pedro Alvarez, chairman of the Cuban food import firm Alimport. ''This harms American producers as much or more than Cuba itself,'' said Alvarez, speaking at a news conference to announce a $22 million contract for the island to buy milk from Dairy America of Fresno, California. (AP, 18/2/05)

February 17: Cartoons and time capsules are the newest weapons in a four-decade-old war of words between the United States and Cuba. Long-simmering US-Cuba tensions have heated up since last May when President Bush tightened sanctions and said he would step up propaganda against Fidel Castro and support for Cuban dissidents in a move to hasten the downfall of communist rule on the island. Cuba's state-run television has fired back by broadcasting cartoons lampooning the top US diplomat in Havana, James Cason, as the point man for a transition to a post-Castro Cuba sought by the Bush administration. The cartoons about my alter-ego "Transition Man" clearly show that the Cuban regime realizes that a transition is not only inevitable but fast approaching," Cason said in a statement. (Telemando, Reuters, 17,22/2/05)

February 17: Daniel McNeel, executive director of Gulfport, Mississippi, and Pedro Alvarez, head of ALIMPORT, Cuba´s food import company, have renewed an agreement to increase shipments from that harbor to Cuba. The accord with Gulfport, the third most important southern US seaport, was first signed in 2003. McNeel said he would be pleased if the renewal would help boost bilateral trade exchange. (Prensa Latina, 18/2/05)

February 18: The American Farm Bureau Federation supports a bill introduced in the Senate to facilitate and increase US agricultural exports to Cuba. The Agricultural Export Facilitation Act of 2005 would authorize Cuba to make payments directly to US banks; clarify that Cuba's payments do not have to be received before exports leave US shores; make it easier for US citizens to travel to Cuba to market agricultural products; and expedite temporary visas for Cuban nationals to visit the United States to inspect goods before they are shipped. "We applaud these changes, which would clarify Congress' intent when it enacted trade sanctions reforms in 2000 and streamline the procedure that allows U.S. farmers and ranchers to export their products to Cuba," said AFBF President Bob Stallman. (Texas Agriculture, 18/2/05)

February 18: US President George W. Bush announced that he is extending for another year restrictions on naval and air operations in the vicinity of Cuba. These measures were implemented following an incident on February 24, 1996 when two Cuban Air Force fighter jets shot down two small Cessna aircraft manned by anti-Castro exiles on international waters north of the island. (EFE, 18/2/05)

February 21: As part of a broad strategy to spur political change in Cuba, the US government has been quietly sending hundreds of thousands of dollars to activists seeking to undermine Fidel Castro's one-party state, according to documents and interviews. The cash assistance is being channeled through the US-financed National Endowment for Democracy and pays the salaries of more than two dozen freelance writers for a Miami-based web site that posts articles critical of the Cuban government. The cash also supports opposition figures, human-rights activists and political prisoners and their families, including prisoners jailed in 2003 during the government's crackdown on dissidents. Supporters argue the cash payments, totaling about $200,000 a year, help keep opposition alive in a country where most dissidents are fired from their jobs and ostracized. Elizardo Sanchez, an activist who leads the Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation in Havana, said his organization would not accept funds from the US government because it could compromise the commission's independence and open it to further attacks by Cuban officials. But Sanchez said he saw nothing wrong with US funds paying freelancers for their work or supporting activists, political prisoners and their families. "It's normal that the NED helps," he said. "The function of the NED is to promote democracy in the world." (Chicago Tribune, 21/2/05)

February 22: M embers of the Cuban Cultural Center, an arts group that usually sponsors Cuban exhibitions and concerts, adopted an independent library in Cuba. They chose one in Las Tunas, Cuba, the Felix Varela Independent Library, which is named for a Cuban priest famous for his work for immigrants and the Roman Catholic Church in Lower Manhattan in the 1800's. The library itself, like some 100 others that have been founded since 1998, offers Cubans an alternative to the official media or state-run libraries. They carry newspapers and magazines from around the world or books considered taboo by the regime. (The New York Times, 22/2/05)

February 22: In a blow to growing US agricultural sales to Cuba, the Treasury Department ruled that American exports to the island cannot leave US ports until Havana pays cash. The ''clarification'' comes after a lengthy review of provisions in the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act (TSRA) of 2000, which permits limited cash sales of food and agricultural products to Cuba. Most other exports are barred by the 42-year-old US trade embargo. The review stemmed from concerns about possible violations of TSRA, which had led some banks to delay crediting Cuban payments to the accounts of US exporters, said Treasury officials. TSRA requires that Cuba pay cash but seemed unclear on whether payments had to be made before the US goods left American ports or -- a more common international trade procedure -- after the goods arrived at Cuban ports. The clarification ''doesn't affect the ability of US exporters to send shipments to Cuba, but rather ensures that they receive payments before the goods are shipped to the island,'' said Treasury spokeswoman Molly Millerwise. [OFAC Issues Clarification] (The Miami Herald, Sun Sentinel, Reuters, 23/2/05)

February 22: The Treasury Department made clear that Cuba must make cash payments before the shipment of US agriculture and medical products to the island. The ruling drew quick criticism from farm-state senators, with one threatening to block nominees to Treasury posts. "I'm outraged at this attempt by Treasury Department bureaucrats to choke off US agriculture sales to Cuba," Senator Max Baucus of Montana, top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said. Baucus has also joined senior Republicans, including Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts of Kansas and Larry Craig of Idaho, in promoting legislation to remove what they say are the bureaucratic obstacles being put up by the administration to farm trade. Senate Finance Committee chairman Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, also said he was considering a response to the new rule. (CNN, Reuters, 22/2/05)

February 23: Cuba is considering halting purchases of American farm products worth $400 million a year because of new Bush administration rules demanding payment before shipment to the island, Cuban officials said. One official said the payment rules announced by the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control made Cuban shipments vulnerable to confiscation by Cuban exiles with legal claims against Fidel Castro's government. "If they manage to obstruct trade, Cuba will find alternative suppliers,'' the president of Cuba's National Assembly or legislature, Ricardo Alarcon, told the press. He said the measure would hurt US agricultural producers, who have sold $790 million in food to Cuba since December 2001. "They are shooting themselves in the foot,'' Alarcon said. Pedro Alvarez, head of the Cuban food import agency Alimport, said Cuba would honor its commitments with American suppliers, though trade will inevitably decline. "Of course, we are not going to continue buying. The shipments could be seized once Cuba has paid for them,'' said one Cuban official who asked not to be named. (Reuters, 23/2/05)

February 24: A Cuban government tobacco company lost its right to the Cohiba cigar name in the United States, allowing New York-based General Cigar Holdings to market cigars bearing the famous trademark in this country. The US Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Cubatabaco could not hold the trademark in the United States because of the trade embargo with Cuba. In its ruling, the appeals panel reversed a lower court's opinion that had stopped General Cigar from selling products under the Cohiba name in the United States. "We hold that the Embargo Regulations bar Cubatabaco's acquisition of property rights in the US," the appeals court said. (Reuters, 24/2/05)

February 26: The US Department of Homeland Security is denying a published report that Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino, the archbishop of Havana, was detained at Miami International Airport for three hours and threatened with deportation back to Cuba. El Nuevo Herald, citing two unnamed eyewitnesses, reported that immigration authorities at MIA harassed the prelate, who was traveling on a diplomatic passport issued by the Vatican. Zack Mann, spokesman for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said that Ortega was ''detained briefly'' for about an hour after he arrived aboard a charter flight from Havana about 11:50 a.m. ''We can confirm that he did arrive and was processed just as any other foreign arrival would be processed when visiting the United States,'' Mann said. "All procedures were absolutely followed. "He was treated in the utmost courteous manner.'' Neither Ortega nor the Archdiocese of Miami could be reached for comment. (The Miami Herald, 27/2/05)

February 26: A member of the San Diego Port Commission bucked policy by going to Cuba and striking a tentative deal with a food importer. Kourosh Hangafarin, appointed to the panel less than a month ago by Mayor Dick Murphy, signed a deal between the San Diego Unified Port District and Havana-based Alimport, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported. The deal would require commission approval at a public hearing. The news stunned Bill Hall, head of the commission, who said he told the Union-Tribune he was upset when Hangafarin faxed him the contract between the port and Alimport. "I am concerned by it; I don't like it," Hall told the newspaper. "Basically, he didn't act in accordance with policy, but he's new to the board, so I'm going to look at what the repercussions may be." (North County Times, 26/2/05)

February 28: The State Department listed prisoner abuse in Cuba, violence in Haiti and intimidation of the media and the opposition in Venezuela as areas of concern for human rights in Latin America. The concerns were part of the department's 2004 Human Rights Report, detailing conditions around the world. The report reserved its sharpest language for countries such as Cuba, Syria, Saudi Arabia and North Korea. During her introductory remarks at a media briefing on the report, Paula Dobriansky, Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs, called Cuba's record "a blight on the stunning advancement of freedom worldwide.'' [Cuba: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2004] (The Miami Herald, EFE, 1/3/05)