[NYTr] US Ploy Against Cuba on Course?

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN)
http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles


US Ploy Against Cuba on Course?

By Angel Rodríguez Alvarez
AIN Special Service

What does Washington want with the recent violation of the migratory 
agreements signed with Cuba in September of 1994 and May of 1995?

The question on the issue is answered after reading the Cuban Foreign 
Ministry statements of July 16th and August 21st.

In the first statement, the foreign ministry denounced that during the 
nine months from October 1st 2006 to June 30th of this year, the US 
Interest Section in Havana granted entry visas to migrate legally to 
the US to only 10,724 people, representing only 53.6 percent of the 
minimum annual quota of 20,000 which Washington is committed to comply 
with  by the end of September, according to the bilateral accords.

In the second Foreign Ministry statement, the denunciation deals with 
the same issue and reviews another type of violation: when 44 Cuban 
citizens were captured at sea attempting to reach US territory and were 
not returned as stipulated in the agreements and were then taken to the 
illegally occupied US Naval Base in Guantanamo. What calls ones 
attention was that in this case US authorities did not comply with the 
agreements signed on May 2nd, 1995 and decided to face up to the 
complex task of looking for destination for the illegal immigrants. 
This is confirmed when 17 of the 44 immigrants went on a three week 
hunger strike to protest about their detention and demand entry into 
the US. The situation forced Washington to get the Hungarian government 
involved in the situation offering 29 Cubans political asylum forcing 
the US taxpayers to pay for their lodgings, winter clothes and language 
course for one year.

Five of them will be granted US visas and the rest will wait for 
permission from a third country. As the Cuban Foreign Ministry recalls, 
16 percent of those intercepted on the high seas are not returned to 
Cuba, while a refugee center is being constructed at the Guantanamo 
Base, the Cuban Adjustment Act remains intact and the so called dry 
foot-wet foot policy stimulates the illegal immigration, sacrificing so 
many lives. "Criminal" is the only adjective we can use for the 
Empire?s conduct and its lackeys, with the objective of denigrating 
Cuba and its socialist system.

"The Hungarian government, the Cuban Foreign Ministry points out, knows 
well, as well as its master, that these people are not politically 
persecuted, much less ?figures belonging to anti Cuban elements?.  They 
are, simply, immigrants for economic reasons who probably do not 
qualify to be granted visas by the US government because of their past 
or status."

These maneuvers, denounced by Cuba, feed the suspicion that the US 
administration is attempting to create the right conditions to provoke 
a mass exodus of Cubans towards US coasts, strengthen the already tense 
relations and attempt the adoption of punitive measures against Cuba.

It concerns, evidently, a ploy on course that must be made known and 
observed closely by the international community. 

/map