Chronicle on Cuba - September 2005

Security

September 19: Nineteen years after the Cuban missile crisis nearly sparked a nuclear war, Fidel Castro asked the Soviet Union to redeploy atomic weapons to his island, says a new book based on reports by Moscow's KGB intelligence agency. The book is based on documents revealed by KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin. Mitrokhin and respected British historian Christopher Andrew first collaborated on a 1999 book about KGB operations against the United States and Europe. Their new book, “The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World”, covers KGB operations in Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Its most startling revelation about Cuba is that Castro, concerned that President Ronald Reagan was planning to attack Cuba in 1981, urged a senior Soviet army general visiting Havana to counter the deployment of US cruise missiles to Europe. ''Castro made the extraordinary proposal that, if the deployment went ahead, Moscow should seriously reconsider reestablishing the nuclear missile bases in Cuba dismantled after the missile crisis 19 years earlier,'' it says. The book does not elaborate or record the Soviet reaction. (The Miami Herald, 19/9/05)