Chronicle on Cuba - November 2006

US-Cuba Relations

November 1: Glum US vendors find themselves fewer in number and fading in importance at Havana's annual international trade fair, a plight they blame on a 44-year-old Cold War trade embargo that they say is handing the Cuban market to other countries. Of the 50 or so vendors who bothered to show up this week, many sit on plastic chairs in drab booths, looking like they need a pack of cards to pass the time in the absence of serious deal-making. "Unfortunately, there aren't that many buyers. Lots of tire kickers but that's about it," said Roberto Fernandez of Bunge Shortening and Oils. Five years ago, after the US Congress allowed agricultural exports to Cuba, there was a separate trade fair just for US companies that drew about 800 vendors. But at last year's international trade fair, that dropped to 150 US firms. This year's further slide reflects what the vendors said were President George W. Bush's efforts to steadily toughen enforcement of the trade embargo that dates back to October 1962, as it tries to pressure one of the world's last communist states to change. Sellers complained that the United States under Bush has made trade with Cuba more expensive and imposed financial terms that limit their ability to compete. (Reuters, 1/11/06)

November 1: Cuban Foreign Affair Minister Felipe Pérez Roque termed as excellent the massive debates held across the island about the US embargo against Cuba. In statements to the press, Mr. Perez Roque pointed out that some 200,000 Cuban citizens participated in those debates and that the number of conferences increased this year thanks to the incorporation of more than 500 university students as speakers. More than 30 meetings were carried out in the western province of Pinar del Rio. (AIN, 1/11/06)

November 1: A Cuba government official told a United Nations summit in Greece that the US government was to blame for the poor Internet access that its citizens enjoy. Juan Fernandez, a Cuban government official in the Commission of Electronic Commerce, assailed the US government's economic embargo and argued that as a result poorer countries are "financing" the Internet. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Fernandez to a high-level working group two years ago. Fernandez's only problem was that a longtime Internet engineer and researcher was present and challenged those claims. Bill Woodcock, research director of the non-profit Packet Clearing House who has set up Internet exchange points in Latin America and other developing nations, replied by saying that the Cuban government's problems stem from its own telecommunications monopoly and its official censorship policies. (CNET News.com, 1/11/06)

November 1: A Florida cattle broker who organized the sale of Vermont cattle to Cuba two years ago said Cuban officials were eying more of the state's animals. "In the spring, Cuba intends to buy more dairy cattle," John Parke Wright IV said. The 76 Vermont Holstein and Jersey heifers purchased two years ago are adapting to the country's hot and humid weather, officials said. The officials are happy with the cows' milk output and offspring. "They are animals with very good genetic potential," said Roberto Hernandez Antunez, manager of Nina Bonita Farm, where the cattle were sent. (Rutland Herald, 3//1/06)

November 2: Havana denounced that the US thwarts Cuba’s access to the Internet wide band, while accusing the Island of limiting the service in the country. As the result of US restrictions, the wide band allowed for the entire country of Cuba to connect to the network of networks is almost the same as the one granted to private or corporate users in other countries, Juventud Rebelde daily reported. In Australia, Bangladesh, Great Britain, Italy, or the US, an internet user can access a high speed service with chances of direct transfer of up to 24 megabytes per second. In Norway or Japan, that figure tops 100, the publication revealed. However, Cuba, a country with over 11 million people, can use, through satellite, only 65 megabytes of wide band for output and 124 for input. (Prensa Latina, 2/11/06)

November 2: Cuba's ambassador to Spain warned the United States government against any military invasion of Cuba in its bid to pursue regime change in the communist-run island. US officials have repeatedly said they will not invade Cuba, and only wish to see democracy on the island, but fears of such an invasion have been prevalent in Cuba. "A military adventure in Cuba (would not be) a military joyride," Ambassador Alberto Velazco San Jose told reporters. "We are prepared for a popular war. Behind each tree there could be a Cuban man or woman and that could cost many lives for both Cuba and the US," he added. Velazco said recent reports written by the US Commission for Assistance for a Free Cuba, appointed by US President George W. Bush, contained what he described as "a secret plan" to overthrow a government in Cuba. (AP, 2/11/06) 

November 5: Scholars at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, are researching the options for settlements and preparing a blueprint for Cuba, based largely on the experience of ex-Soviet states. The project is financed by a $750,000 grant from the US Agency for International Development, which provides money for a variety of pro-democracy projects related to Cuba and is often accused by the Castro government of trying to foment opposition on the island. Any settlement in Cuba certainly will take imagination and time, experts agree.  "We're looking at a giant bankruptcy off our shore when the government changes," said Michael Kelly, a law professor and researcher at Creighton. "So, you have to be a little bit creative." (Sun Sentinel, 5/11/06) 

November 6: Twenty Cubans and four Haitians were detained after police spotted them trying to land their boat on Culebra, a tiny island off Puerto Rico's east coast. The group had traveled from St. Maarten, 150 miles to the east, according to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Also, US immigration agents arrested 24 Cubans in St. Thomas, which is part of the US Virgin Islands. The group had paid smugglers to bring them directly from Cuba, authorities said. (Orlando Sentinel, 7/11/06)

November 6: US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice claimed on US television that the transition away from a Castro-led regime had "clearly" started in Cuba. She also rejected a power transfer from Fidel Castro to his brother Raul, or any other current governmental /Communist figures. “Clearly a transition is under way in Cuba one way or another”, the US Secretary of State said. “I don't have any information on the health of Fidel Castro. I think we don't know. But a transition is clearly under way, and what has been a long-standing dictatorship is obviously going to come to an end sooner or later”, she added. “Our role and our goal has to be to insist that the Cuban people will have a real opportunity for a true democracy, that there wouldn't be just the transfer of power to another member of the regime, but that the Cuban people will get to do what people throughout the Western Hemisphere are now doing: They'll get to select their leaders. There will be free and fair elections in which they can select their leaders”, Rice said. “I think what there cannot be is simply the transfer from one to another”. (Fox News, Global Insight, 7/11/06)

November 6: Stepped up enforcement of US sanctions on doing business in dollars with communist Cuba is forcing governments to change how they finance embassies in Havana, diplomats said. The practice of wiring money to US banks and sending US bank checks to Havana embassies to cash has become more difficult due to US tightening under the Bush administration, they said. The changes are forcing many to abandon the dollar and convert to euro accounts to conduct their daily business. Foreign governments were sent scrambling in September when state-run Banco Metropolitano, the only Cuban bank that accepts checks from US banks, informed clients its traditional intermediary, the National Bank of Canada, would no longer process checks without an attached US license that was no more than two years old. "We recommend you look for other ways and a currency other than U.S. dollars to transfer money to our country, as in the future we could face new difficulties in dealing with these checks," the memo concluded. "We asked our embassy in Washington to confirm the validity of our license (...) However we were told that issuing checks from a US bank itself was a violation," an Asian diplomat said. "Once our routine way of transferring funds from a US bank to Cuba was denied, we had no choice but to look for an alternative and after a month worked out to send euros from a bank in Spain to our dollar accounts in Cuba," he said. (Reuters, 6/11/06)

November 7: Pernod Ricard , the world's second largest wines and spirits group, said United States constitutional rights may have been infringed in its dispute over US rights to the Havana Club Cuban rum brand. A United States government agency denied in July an application for a licence to renew the brand's registration in the US, opening the way for competitor Bacardi Limited to launch a rival "Havana Club" made in Puerto Rico. "We will make use of the fifth amendment (of the US constitution)," Pernod Ricard Chairman Patrick Ricard told the company's annual shareholders meeting, saying Pernod's marketing partner had launched a legal challenge to the decision. (Reuters, 7/11/06) 

November 8: Weary of navigating the Treasury Department's stringent rules on money transfers to Cuba, MoneyGram International called it quits. Starting mid-September, the cash transfer company stopped serving the island. ''It was too complicated,'' said Cathy Rebuffoni, a spokeswoman for the Minneapolis-based firm, ``and we weren't getting any volumes.'' MoneyGram was the latest big-name financial services company to cut back or end its dealings with Havana under a US crackdown that appears to be hitting Cuba hard, severely disrupting the government's ability to make and receive international payments. (The Miami Herald, 8/11/06)

November 8: The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the two-year house arrest handed down by a Cuban court to a journalist who reported on a dengue fever outbreak that the authorities censored. Journalist Guillermo Espinosa Rodríguez of the independent agency Agencia de Prensa Libre Oriental (APLO) was convicted by a court in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba on the uniquely Cuban charge of “social dangerousness.” The authorities often use this vaguely worded charge to silence critics. Under article 72 of the Cuban Penal Code, “any person shall be deemed dangerous if he or she has shown proclivity to commit crimes demonstrated by conduct that is in manifest contradiction with the norms of socialist morality.” It is punishable by up to four years in prison. “It is outrageous that the Cuban authorities would seek to censor an outbreak of a deadly disease and punish a journalist for performing a vital public service by exposing it,” said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. (CPJ Press Release, 8/11/06)

November 8: Calling the Cuban military one of the most respected and strongest of the island's institutions, the former head of the Miami-based Southern Command said the US military is ready to work with, train and supply Cuban soldiers when democracy prevails there. Army General Bantz J. Craddock, the four-star general who now runs NATO operations in Europe, made the points in an academic article outlining the ways the US and Cuban armed forces could work together in humanitarian, counterdrug, counterterrorism and disaster relief operations. The article mirrors US policy toward Cuba, and in particular the recent Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba report, but was unusual in that such a high-ranking Army general helped write it. The article published in Cuban Affairs, a University of Miami online journal, was co-authored by Major Barbara Fick. Craddock ran US military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean as Southcom chief from 2004 until last October, and Fick serves as Army special assistant to the head of Southcom. (The Miami Herald, 8/11/06)

November 12: Cuban Parliament President Ricardo Alarcon convoked a new solidarity campaign with the five Cubans jailed in the US, to spread awareness of the case and press for their release. Alarcon bewailed that after eight years of prison and struggle, the issue remains out of the big media and is largely unknown by the US people. The call was launched for December 12-27, on occasion of the fifth anniversary of the trial for Fernando Gonzalez, Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero and Rene Gonzalez in Miami. (Prensa Latina, 12/11/06)

November 12: The US government believes Fidel Castro's health is deteriorating and that the Cuban dictator is unlikely to live through 2007. US government officials say there is still some mystery about Castro's diagnosis, his treatment and how he is responding. But these officials believe the 80-year-old leader has cancer of the stomach, colon or pancreas. He was seen weakened and thinner in official state photos released in October, and it is considered unlikely that he will return to power or survive through the end of next year, said the US government and defense officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the politically sensitive topic. With chemotherapy, Castro may live up to 18 months, said the defense official. Without it, expected survival would drop to three months to eight months. American officials will not talk publicly about how they glean clues to Castro's health. But US spy agencies include physicians who study pictures, video, public statements and other information coming out of Cuba. (AP, 12/11/06)

November 12: Swiss banks Credit Suisse and UBS said they have severed relations with Cuba and are not conducting any business dealings with the country. UBS said it had not had any dealings with Cuba since 2005 while Credit Suisse said it adopted a similar policy at the start of the year but would consider handling non-dollar payments although this was difficult. "UBS does not maintain any relations with Cuba-domiciled individuals and also UBS does not execute any payments to Cuba. The policy, which was instituted in 2005, concerns a number of sensitive countries, including North Korea, Iran, Cuba and Sudan," a spokesman for UBS said. Rival bank Credit Suisse said it had also decided not to enter into new business with sensitive countries since the start of the year. "We do not do payments in US dollars but payments in other currencies are possible if we can find a correspondent bank. But this is very difficult," a spokesman for Credit Suisse said, referring to Cuba. (Reuters, 12/11/06)

November 15: Two longtime anti-Castro activists convicted of plotting to possess illegal weapons were sentenced to between three and four years in prison in Fort Lauderdale federal court. Santiago Alvarez, a wealthy Miami developer who has supported Cuban exile causes, must serve about four years in prison and pay a $10,000 fine. His colleague, Osvaldo Mitat, must serve three years, but does not have to pay any fine. Both men, who pleaded guilty in September on the eve of their high-stakes trial, avoided the possibility of spending the rest of their lives in prison. Alvarez, 65, and Mitat, 64, had cut plea deals on one count each of conspiring to possess illegal weapons. The other charges, including possessing illegal weapons, were dropped. Those offenses, coupled with the conspiracy count, carried a maximum of 20 years in prison. US District Judge James Cohn, who imposed the sentences, had rejected bids by the pair's legal team to move the men's trial to Miami federal court and also opposed an 11th-hour proposal to include Cuban Americans from Miami-Dade County in the Broward County jury pool. (The Miami Herald, 15/11/06) 

November 15: Two congressmen who oppose sanctions on Cuba said they will push for an investigation of US programs to promote democracy on the island after a report uncovered poor oversight and indications of wastefulness. ''The conclusions are disturbing, to say the least,'' Representative Bill Delahunt (Democrat-Massachusetts), said of a report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. The GAO report said more than 95 percent of US Agency for International Development programs for Cuba were handed out without any competitive bids and were then subject to only perfunctory reviews. It cites questionable purchases of items like cashmere sweaters and crab meat for dissidents on the island. Delahunt is set to become chairman of the Oversight and Investigations panel of the House Committee on International Relations when the Democratic-controlled Congress reconvenes early next year. He also is co-chair with Arizona Republican Representative Jeffrey Flake of the Cuba Working Group, a bipartisan caucus that opposes many US sanctions against Cuba. The two lawmakers requested the GAO study. (Chicago Tribune, The Miami Herald, 15,16/11/06)

November 16: A confidential USAID memo from March 22, 1996 -- less than one month after the Brothers to the Rescue planes were shot down -- notes the agency supported sending as much as $400 at a time to ''victims of repression'' in Cuba. The memo says USAID's Latin American and Caribbean Office, the US Interests Section in Havana, the State Department and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee supported direct cash assistance of up to $10,000. The Office of the Inspector General, citing an inability to track the money because auditing the program from Cuba was difficult, left the decision to USAID. Larry Byrne, an assistant USAID administrator from 1993 to 1997, decided to ban sending cash. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, said USAID-financed groups should be allowed to send cash to the dissidents: ``I have always advocated for such measures.'' (The Miami Herald, 16/11/06)

November 16: Cubans fleeing their communist homeland are reaching US shores in increasingly large numbers as more brave the trip and new smuggler routes make it easier to land. Traditionally, Cubans have used makeshift boats, rafts and even inner tubes to ride the currents toward the Florida Keys and Florida's southeast coast. But the Coast Guard and Border Patrol agents are heavily focused on the eastern shore, so more smugglers driving high-speed boats are popping up on Florida's less-populated, less-patrolled southwestern coast. "Authorities tied it up so tight near Miami that it's gotten hard for them to get in," said Captain Thom Carr of the police department on Marco Island, located west of Miami on the other side of the state. "Because of that, they told us (Cubans) might start heading this way, and now they are." A group of 28 Cubans reached land in Naples. The previous day, 17 landed on Sanibel Island. And in August, 20 Cubans landed near Marco Island, according to The News-Press in Fort Myers. That trend forced the Border Patrol to shift a special unit to southwest Florida this year to help law enforcement track down the smugglers. (USA Today, 16/11/06)

November 16: Havana charged that US aid to dissidents in Cuba invites corruption, pointing to a recent US congressional probe, which showed that the funds have been used to buy luxury items. "The program, which is corrupt, breeds corruption," the Communist Party daily Granma said in a front-page article titled "Wasted Money”. "As Cuba has said, these payments prove the political and financial ties that the majority of the supposed 'opponents' of the island's government have with the United States," the official website Cubadebate said. The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report showed that poor monitoring of millions of dollars intended to support Cuban dissidents has led to the purchase of Godiva chocolates, Sony PlayStations and other luxury items at US taxpayers' expense. (AFP, 16/11/06)

November 16: Cuba's dissident movement has responded with conflicting reactions to the recent controversy over the irregular use of US funds allocated to promote political change on the communist island.  Marta Beatriz Roque, the head of the Assembly to Promote Civil Society, said that the dissidents do not receive money from the US but rather "the means" to pursue their activities. She told the press dissidents had received from the United States books, medicine and radios, among other "things having to do with the possibility of bringing democracy to the people," and she acknowledged that they accepted anything that Washington wanted to send them. Elizardo Sanchez, who heads the outlawed Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, said that the US help is "necessary and positive." The US aid, Sanchez said, comes with no "conditions ... (because) the Commission opposes the (US economic) embargo and when they have been able to send us aid we accepted it willingly and we will continue accepting it."  On the other hand, Manuel Cuesta Morua, the spokesman for the social democratic Arco Progresista, said that the United States "must not finance the Cuban dissidence." Also Miriam Leyva, one of the founders of the Ladies in White, said that "there must be no funds from any government allocated to the dissidents”. "I'm against any funds from the American government and I think that if it wants to help the Cuban people it should lift the embargo and allow trade, tourism (and) academic exchanges, and Cubans should be allowed to travel without restriction to the United States or send money to their family" on the island, said Leyva, the wife of one of Cuba's roughly 300 political prisoners. (EFE, 16/11/06) 

November 16: Florida Governor Jeb Bush took a view on ailing Fidel Castro, and made clear his desire to see democracy established in the Communist country. The Governor referred to a TV interview the 80-year-old Cuban leader had given recently. Calling Castro "frail," and mentioning the Bush Administration's support for pro-democratic supporters in Cuba, the Governor suggested furthering the opening for political change in Havana. Ricardo Alarcon, the leader of Cuba's National Assembly, took the comments as a call for an invasion of Cuba. "You have, first of all, those in Miami that are calling for even a military action against Cuba, including the governor," Alarcon told the Cuban American National Foundation. While the Governor's political team denies the allegation as an insult, they point out that Bush's position on Cuba has not changed and he does not support Castro's oppressive regime. (AHN, 16/11/06)

November 16: Cuba's central bank blasted Swiss banks UBS and Credit Suisse for cutting off business dealings with Cuba, saying they had bowed to US pressure. In a statement, the central bank said the United States' long-standing economic embargo against the communist nation led to the banks' "pitiful" decision. "The actions of these two banks have nothing to do with respect of the law or looking after their banking transactions. It is simply an act of submission to the US, which they don't dare confess," the Cuban bank said. The Swiss banks said in response to a published report they had stopped doing business with "sensitive" countries," including Cuba, citing the difficulties and expenses involved. Despite the pullout of UBS and Credit Suisse, Cuban bank said a growing number of countries and organizations are refusing to follow "an empire whose constant failures in recent weeks are just the tip of the iceberg of its irreversible decline." (Reuters, 16/11/06) 

November 17: William Lee Brent, a member of the Black Panthers who hijacked an airliner to Cuba in 1969 and later wrote a gritty account of his life, died on November 4 of bronchial pneumonia at his home in Havana. He was 75. After years of crime, prison and low-paying jobs, Mr. Brent joined the Black Panthers in 1968 and quickly rose in the ranks of the radical black-power organization based in Oakland, California. To avoid trial for his role in a shootout with San Francisco police, Mr. Brent hijacked a TWA flight and spent the rest of his life in Cuba. He chronicled his life in his 1996 autobiography, "Long Time Gone: A Black Panther's True-Life Story of His Hijacking and Twenty-Five Years in Cuba." Although he came to miss the United States and had reservations about life in Cuba, he said he never regretted the actions that separated him from his family and his homeland. (The Washington Post, 17/11/06) 

November 17: The families of two men executed by Fidel Castro's government will receive more than $90 million in Cuban assets held in the United States, a federal judge ruled. Howard Anderson was arrested in April 1961 and accused by the Cuban government of smuggling guns to anti-Communist rebels a few days before the Bay of Pigs invasion by some 1,500 US-backed expatriates. During the attack, Cuban troops shot down two B-26 bombers operated by the CIA in support of the landing at the Bay of Pigs on Cuba's southwestern coast. Thomas "Pete" Ray, 30, a CIA contractor, was one of four B-26 airmen killed in the attack. Ray, a pilot with the Alabama National Guard, was shot by Cuban troops after his plane crash landed. Anderson was executed by a firing squad in the days following the invasion. "I just wish this had come a month earlier," Anderson's daughter Bonnie Anderson said. (CNN, 17/11/06)

November 21: Human Rights First welcomed the release of Cuban journalist Oscar Mario Gonzalez Perez, who had been held without trial since his arrest in July 2005. A week before, the New York-based advocacy group mounted a campaign for Gonzalez's release, following reports from his wife that his health was drastically deteriorating in prison and that he was being denied medical care. More than 1,000 Human Rights First supporters sent emails and letters to Cuban authorities urging that Gonzalez be freed. (PRNewswire, 21/11/06)

November 21: Cuban dissident Camilo Cairo Falcon was picked up by the US Coast Guard while fleeing the island on a raft and taken to the US base in Guantanamo Bay, where he requested political asylum, dissident sources said. "His family told me he jumped into a raft and was arrested and taken to the military base. He's asking for asylum from there," said Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN) president Elizardo Sanchez. Falcon was arrested for demonstrating against the Cuban government in July 2005 and was released recently from jail for health reasons, a CCDHRN statement said. (AFP, 21/11/06) 

November 22: A US music company lost its bid for rights to more than dozen songs from the golden age of Cuban music, ending a six-year legal battle against the island's government in a London court. After a protracted legal dispute that included moving the entire trial to Havana for a few days to take testimony there, a British judge decided not to give New Jersey-based Peer Music rights to 14 songs -- but he didn't give the rights to the Cuban government music publishing company either. The litigation was considered a critical test case that could have affected up to 600 of Cuba's most cherished oldies. Having successfully fought off Peer's claim, the Cuban music publishers declared themselves winners in the case. It is likely to result in more litigation, since it is still unclear who has full rights to each song. (The Miami Herald, 22/11/06)

November 23: Janet Ray Weininger finally won a battle against Fidel Castro when a court ordered she can collect $23.9 million in frozen Cuban funds in compensation for her executed father. But Weininger said the long-fought victory in a wrongful death lawsuit against the Cuban government won't make her forget what she sees as Castro's cruelty. For years she had written Castro, seeking information on the fate of her father, a CIA contractor whose plane was shot down by Cuban anti-aircraft guns during the US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961. "He answered me by sending me a bloodied back-and-white photo of him," Weininger told the press. The photo sent in 1978 showed the lifeless body of Thomas "Pete" Ray in a coffin. In a note, Castro wrote, "I have your father's body, I've kept him in a morgue." "This was Fidel Castro's trophy," Weininger, 52, said, adding that Castro's note to her was initially given to author Peter Wyden while he was in Cuba doing research for his book "Bay of Pigs, The Untold Story" in the late 1970s. (Reuters, 23/11/06)

November 24: Perhaps a sign of the imminent post-Castro times, a small but official congressional delegation will be taking a quick trip to Cuba next month for a look-see. Helping to round up some interesting folks for the lawmakers to talk to is Sarah Stephens, a policy activist who has been trying for years to foster dialogue with the United States' communist neighbor. Stephens, who had been working to free up travel to the island, recently opened the Center for Democracy in the Americas, which will expand her work to the Southern Hemisphere, particularly Venezuela. Formerly at the Center for International Policy, Stephens arranges for informal groups to visit Cuba to talk to a wide range of people. "She's good at appreciating all the perspectives that people bring to bear," said Lance Walker, an aide to Representative Jeff Flake (Republican-Arizona). Flake, who is heading the trip, and Representative William D. Delahunt (Democrat-Massachusetts.), who is also going, are leaders of the congressional Cuba working group. "She's probably left of center, and we're on the right somewhere," Walker added. (The Washington Post, 24/11/06)

November 24: Several high-profile Cuban dissidents asked that the United States end its restrictions on sending aid and traveling to the Communist-ruled island on the grounds that they are not helping the strategy of the internal opposition there. The statement was signed by prominent opposition leaders Martha Beatriz Roque, of the Assembly To Promote Civilian Society, Gisela Delgado Sabión, of the Independent Libraries Project, Elizardo Sánchez, who heads the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, and Vladimiro Roca, of the Social Democratic Party of Cuba and spokesman for All United. In the communique, the dissidents regretted the improper use of funds provided by the United States to help organizations opposing the Fidel Castro regime and underscored the need to "achieve greater efficiency in the use of said funds." One possible way of doing it, they said, would be eliminating a series of restrictions on sending aid and traveling to Cuba which, they said, "in no way help the pro-democracy struggle" being waged inside that country. "We hope that the mistakes made are corrected and that a greater amount of aid reaches pro-democracy activists so they can more swiftly achieve economic, political and social freedom in our country," the brief communique said. Roque's signature was by far the most surprising because of her long-standing support for travel restrictions. Roque is controversial even among Cuban dissidents, particularly for her hard-line stances and close relationship with Cuban-American legislators. (EFE, The Miami Herald, 24/11/06)

November 27: The US director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, appointed a conservative specialist on links between national security and economics to head a kind of one-stop shop for the intelligence community on Cuba and Venezuela. As ''mission manager'' for the two countries, Norman A. Bailey will oversee three to five staffers who will pore over information from 16 US government agencies to spot information gaps, help craft intelligence strategies and track the implementation (of those strategies). The administration has five other mission managers specializing in Iran, North Korea, counterterrorism, counterproliferation and counterintelligence. Bailey is well-known in Washington's community of Latin American specialists as a conservative Cold War expert well-versed on regional affairs and a frequent participant of the seminar and conference circuit. Most recently he served as senior fellow at the conservative Potomac Foundation and taught courses on economics and conflict at the Institute of World Politics at the Graduate School of National Security and International Affairs. (The Miami Herald, 28/11/06)

November 27: The US State Department applauded a group of global press advocacy organizations for criticism of the Cuban regime’s continued human rights violations against independent journalists in the Caribbean nation. In a statement to USINFO, the State Department’s Office for Cuban Affairs praised the Global Coordinating Committee of Press Freedom Organizations for deploring the lack of press freedoms in Cuba and for what the office termed the “unjust jailing of journalists” throughout the island nation. In a resolution adopted at its meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, November 21, the committee called for the “immediate” and “unconditional” release of all imprisoned journalists in Cuba and an end to government reprisals against the media in that country.  The committee also demanded that the Cuban government “end its selective policy regarding the issuance of visas to foreign journalists.” (USINFO, 28/11/06)

November 29: Washington showed no sign of accepting Raul Castro's leadership. During a daily briefing with the press, Tom Casey, Deputy Spokesman for the State Department said that the transferring of power to Raul Castro is no solution for the Cuban population. "The creation of some sort of Castro dynasty simply by transferring power to Raul Castro and having him continue to operate the same undemocratic, repressive policies as his brother is certainly not a solution that we think is viable," Casey said.  “We think the Cuban people need to be given the opportunity to see and have democratic change”. “We believe that is what the Cuban people would like to have and we very much believe that what is important for us is to be able to aid the Cuban people as they move through any potential transition so that those kinds of democratic aspirations could be realized”, he added. (Reuters, Washington Files, 29/11/06)