In the game of one-upmanship, the communists seem to be gaining the upper hand over capitalist ideologues. In fact, if one were to go by recent news reports, even the `hand of God' has come to rest on a communist shoulder. No, this is not a joke, this is literally what has transpired over the past few weeks. The legendary Argentine football idol Maradona, known also as the `hand of God', and who is seen as a capitalist success story -- an impoverished footballer whose enterprise helped him become `fabulously' rich, thanks to some of the world's most influential entrepreneurs -- has sought refuge from the material world by landing in communist Cuba. He has asked Fidel Castro, the country's charismatic leader who he describes ``as a fellow rebel'', to save his life. Apparently, Maradona is addicted to cocaine (a particularly pernicious intoxicant) which he claims is killing him. Capitalists around the world are appalled at the turn of events. [continues 307 words]
HAVANA (AP) -- President Fidel Castro said Saturday that Cuba will continue to compete in the Pan Am Games and other international events even though he is suspicious of drug tests flunked by his country's athetes. Castro is demanding an investigation of the tests. "We are not breaking with any institution," the Cuban president said toward the end of the second and last televised hearing on the drug issue, which continued into early Saturday. Castro said that Pan American Sports Organization president Mario Vazquez Rana had expressed interest in Cuba's demand for an investigation. Vazquez Rana had no immediate public comment, however, following Castro's public demands. [continues 404 words]
HAVANA (AP) -- Cuban President Fidel Castro asked Friday for the International Olympic Committee to investigate drug scandals at the Pan American games and demanded four Cuban athletes who tested positive for doping be given back their medals. "And for much more," Castro added during a five-hour televised appearance. "To return the honor of these scorned athletes. We will not rest until it is achieved." Castro asked that IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch form an investigatory commission to follow up on Cuba's charges of irregularities in drug tests given to high-jump world champion Javier Sotomayor and three weight lifting medalists. [continues 77 words]
HAVANA (AP) -- President Fidel Castro put the honor of the Pan American Games on trial Friday with hearings aimed at showing that Cuban athletes were framed for drug use and unjustly forced to give back their gold medals. "It was all a colossal lie, an infamous and shameful lie, a criminal plundering of merits won through denial, tenacity, consecration and sacrifice," the Cuban leader said during the first hearing, a three-hour appearance on live television Thursday night. Castro called for the unusual program, which included the presence of 14 foreign journalists and five Cuban journalists. No questions were allowed until the completion of the second half of the program Friday night. [continues 467 words]
WASHINGTON -- Cuba has tentatively accepted two U.S. requests to enhance antinarcotics cooperation between the countries, even as leading Republican lawmakers portray the nation as a major trafficker, U.S. and Cuban sources said. Cuban officials have told U.S. diplomats they are willing to let the Clinton administration station an anti-narcotics agent at the U.S. mission in Havana, and would be prepared to collaborate on a continuing basis. If final details are worked out, the agent would probably be a Coast Guard officer equipped with electronic devices to detect drugs in containers. [continues 467 words]
HAVANA - n President Fidel Castro, in a speech lasting into the early hours of Thursday, said any U.S. military intervention in conflict-torn Colombia would be ``a colossal disaster'' for the world. ``I think it would be a great madness for the United States to carry out a military intervention there, a massive, incredible mistake,'' Castro said at the close of an anti-capitalist youth conference in Havana. ``The United States would be wrapped up in a huge conflict ... the heat and the mosquitoes of that enormous Colombian jungle would be enough to defeat an invading army,'' he added, drawing applause from his 2,000-strong audience. [continues 208 words]
HAVANA - High-jumper Javier Sotomayor, the world record-holder and 1992 Olympic champion who tested positive for cocaine at the Pan American Games, has withdrawn from the World Championships because of a herniated disc. His withdrawal means the International Amateur Athletic Federation won't have to decide whether to suspend him from the championships at Seville, Spain, Aug. 21-29. IAAF spokesman Giorgio Reineri said Friday that the federation had not yet received official notification of Sotomayor's withdrawal but would welcome it. [continues 259 words]
HAVANA -- Cuba pledged Friday to defend the honor of high jumper Javier Sotomayor, charging that the positive drug tests that cost him his Pan Am gold medal were part of a larger campaign to discredit the Communist government -- possibly by the CIA or Miami exiles. The Cuban government "will defend to the end the integrity and honor of Sotomayor and any other honest athlete like him," the Communist Party daily Granma declared in an extensive front-page story. Sotomayor denies knowingly ingesting the cocaine that showed up on drug tests during the Pan American Games in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Both he and Cuban authorities have suggested that his food or drink may have been laced with the drug. [continues 402 words]
HAVANA (AP) -- Cuban sports officials, claiming that their athletes face continuing prejudice, will contest a ruling that cost high jumper Javier Sotomayor a gold medal at the Pan American Games because of a positive drug test. "Our athletes have had to compete under an atmosphere of hostility, exaggerated provocation and unlimited intolerance," sports minister Humberto Rodriguez said Thursday. Rodriguez said Cuba will fight Sotomayor's two-year suspension from international competition that will force him out of this month's world championships and next year's Olympics. [continues 566 words]
CIENFUEGOS, Cuba (AP) -- President Fidel Castro declared war on drug traffickers during his annual Revolution Day speech Monday night, rejecting charges that his government engages in the practice and promising prosecution for those who do. "They will be tried in Cuba, without a single exception," Castro promised. A recent toughening of Cuba's penal code sets aside capital punishment not only for military officers but also for top ranking civilian members of the communist government found guilty of drug trafficking. Speaking in the open plaza in this coastal city, Castro rejected persistent rumors and charges from what he called the "counterrevolutionary mafia of Miami" that he and his government aid traffickers who use the Caribbean island. [continues 464 words]
WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration has ordered a top-to-bottom review of Cuba's alleged links to drug smugglers, in response to harsh attacks on its efforts to expand anti-narcotics cooperation with Havana. The key part of the inquiry is ''an all-sources intelligence review, a re-examination of all data on Cuba held by a half-dozen agencies, from the DEA to the CIA, top administration officials said. The Justice Department was asked separately to review evidence gathered by a Miami federal grand jury in 1993 that nearly indicted President Fidel Castro's brother on cocaine smuggling charges, officials added. [continues 941 words]
MIAMI (AP) Cuba has denied the Coast Guard permission to pursue drug smugglers in its waters, but has promised to consider other proposals to improve counter-narcotics cooperation, The Miami Herald reported today. Coast Guard and State Department drug interdiction experts and their Cuban counterparts met Monday in Havana but were unable to negotiate a deal, the newspaper said, citing an unnamed State Department official. The Cubans rejected a proposal for a "hot pursuit" agreement. U.S. officials, in turn, refused to expand the talks to other U.S. drug enforcement agencies. [continues 98 words]
Cuba has denied the U.S. Coast Guard permission to enter its waters in hot pursuit of drug smugglers but is considering other proposals to improve counter-narcotics coordination, State Department officials said Thursday. The announcement came as a top congressional leader requested that Cuba be put on a U.S. list of drug transit nations that would require President Clinton to annually certify the island's good conduct in the war on drugs. U.S.-Cuba cooperation in narcotics interdiction has become a sensitive issue for Washington because of the implied shift in the policy of isolating Cuba and charges of Cuban government involvement in the drug traffic. [continues 818 words]
MIAMI (AP) -- Cuba has denied the Coast Guard permission to pursue drug smugglers in its waters, but has promised to consider other proposals to improve counter-narcotics cooperation, The Miami Herald reported today. Coast Guard and State Department drug interdiction experts and their Cuban counterparts met Monday in Havana but were unable to negotiate a deal, the newspaper said, citing an unnamed State Department official. The Cubans rejected a proposal for a "hot pursuit" agreement. U.S. officials, in turn, refused to expand the talks to other U.S. drug enforcement agencies. [continues 98 words]
WASHINGTON - Amid protests from Cuban-American lawmakers, four U.S. officials met Monday in Havana with Cuban officials to discuss ways of improving counternarcotics cooperation, a State Department official said. "This is not a change in U.S. policy," said Michael Ranneberger, who heads the State Department's office of Cuban affairs. The U.S. team consisted of two low-ranking State Department and two Coast Guard officials. Monday's meeting was aimed at elevating communications on counternarcotics issues from an existing telex link to a phone link and other means, an official said, adding that the U.S. team had no plans to offer assistance to Cuba, to share intelligence or to discuss joint operations. [continues 175 words]
WASHINGTON - Amid protests from Cuban-American lawmakers, four U.S. officials met Monday in Havana with Cuban officials to discuss ways of improving counter-narcotics cooperation, a State Department official said. Meetings between U.S. and Cuban officials on issues other than migration are rare but not unprecedented. "This is not a change in U.S. policy," said Michael Ranneberger, who heads the State Department's office of Cuban affairs. He said the meeting was taking place within guidelines for law enforcement efforts on counter-narcotics. [continues 190 words]
HAVANA (Reuters) - The United States and Cuba held talks Monday on ways of improving coordination in the fight against drug-trafficking, one of the rare areas where the two feuding neighbors maintain a degree of cooperation. Officials from the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Coast Guard met their Cuban counterparts in Havana to discuss "operational concerns and procedures relating to drugs interdiction," a U.S. official in Havana who asked not to be identified told Reuters. The U.S. side was led by Michael Kozak, the head of the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba. [continues 205 words]
CAYO CONFITES - On this sandy speck of land off the northern coast of Cuba, the only line of defense against Colombian drug traffickers bound for the United States consists of an aging Soviet-era patrol boat, a British radar system with a six-mile range and 15 Cuban soldiers. "We are seeing a systematic increase in the amount of drugs dropped by air here, then picked up by fast boats and taken out of our waters," said Col. Fredy Curbelo, an Interior Ministry official who recently accompanied an American reporter on an unprecedented tour of counter-drug installations in Cuba. "Our Soviet launches are 20 years old and can go 27 knots, while the drug traffickers can easily go at 45 knots. We are doing what we can with our resources, but we are limited in what we can do." [continues 823 words]
CAYO CONFITES, Cuba -- On this sandy speck of land off the northern coast of Cuba, the line of defense against Colombian drug traffickers bound for the United States consists of an aging Soviet-era patrol boat, a British radar system with a six-mile range and 15 Cuban soldiers. "We are seeing a systematic increase in the amount of drugs dropped by air, then picked up by fast boats and taken out of our waters," said Col. Fredy Curbelo, an Interior Ministry official who accompanied an American reporter on a tour of counter-drug installations in Cuba. [continues 451 words]
CAYO CONFITES, Cuba - On this sandy speck of land off the northern coast of Cuba, the only line of defense against Colombian drug traffickers bound for the United States consists of an aging Soviet-era patrol boat, a British radar system with a six-mile range and 15 Cuban soldiers. "We are seeing a systematic increase in the amount of drugs dropped by air here, then picked up by fast boats and taken out of our waters," said Col. Fredy Curbelo, an Interior Ministry official who recently accompanied an American reporter on an unprecedented tour of counter-drug installations in Communist-ruled Cuba. "Our Soviet launches are 20 years old and can go 27 knots, while the drug traffickers can easily go at 45 knots. We are doing what we can with our resources, but we are limited in what we can do." [continues 930 words]
Inside Cuba
