Chronicle on Cuba - February 2007

Terrorism

February 25: The Colombian government and guerrilla organization ELN (National Liberation Army) began talks in Havana. Colombia´s High Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo, and ambassador in Cuba Julio Londono are heading the governmental delegation, while rebel leaders Pablo Beltran, Juan Carlos Cuellar, and Francisco Galan are doing so for the ELN. This is the fifth round of talks between the Colombian government and the ELN. (Prensa Latina, 25/2/07)

February 27: The former chief of Cuba's military medical services is calling for international weapons inspections of a secret underground lab near Havana, where he says the government is creating biological warfare agents like the plague, botulism and yellow fever. Roberto Ortega, a former army colonel who ran the military's medical services from 1984 to 1994, defected in 2003 and now lives in South Florida. Ortega went on the Spanish-language media circuit to denounce what he claims is an advanced offensive biological warfare weapons program. He spoke at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies where one angry heckler stormed out accusing him of deliberately sowing fear among Cuban exiles. ''They can develop viruses and bacteria and dangerous sicknesses that are currently unknown and difficult to diagnose,'' Ortega told the press. Ortega said he told the CIA nearly two years ago about an underground Cuban facility southwest of Havana. The maximum security lab dubbed ''Labor One'' has an above-ground civilian cover and employs dozens of scientists, he said. But in the underground facility, scientists reproduced and stockpiled deadly germs and bacterias collected in Africa, he added. He visited the lab in 1992 when he accompanied a high-level Russian military delegation, he said. Ortega is believed to be the first defector with details of such an alleged biological warfare facility, said University of Miami professor Manuel Cereijo, who studies Cuba's biotechnology and terrorism issues. Ortega said he has come forward now because he did not see the CIA taking public action on his information. The CIA and the US State Department declined to comment. The Cuban government has denied such programs exist. (The Miami Herald, 27/2/07)