Cuba: US carried funds to opposition

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Cuba: US carried funds to opposition
By WILL WEISSERT – 30 minutes ago

HAVANA (AP) — Cuba on Monday accused America's top diplomat in the country of ferrying funds to dissidents on the island from a man it characterizes as a terrorist.

E-mails and other correspondence suggest U.S. Interests Section chief Michael Parmly was asked to carry cash from Miami to dissidents in Havana, Cuban authorities said. In one e-mail, activist Martha Beatriz Roque urged her nephew in Miami to give "letters" to Parmly. Cuban officials claim the word "letters" was code for cash, but they gave no proof money was involved.

Cuba said the funds came from the Miami-based Fundacion Rescate Juridica, headed by Santiago Alvarez, a Cuban-American businessman once convicted in the U.S. of conspiring to collect military-style weapons to overthrow Cuba's government.

Alvarez is currently serving a 10-month prison term for refusing to testify against Luis Posada Carriles, the alleged mastermind of bombings of a Cuban jetliner and hotels, and of assassination attempts on former President Fidel Castro.

"This reveals the connection between the counterrevolutionaries in Cuba and the terrorists," Cuban Foreign Ministry official Josefina Vidal Ferreira said at a news conference carried live on state television and radio.

She asked U.S. authorities to carry out their own "deep investigations," and said Cuba is "waiting for the government of the United States to take appropriate measures and adhere to international protocol."


Read more: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g8s2HH2Iy88qyKMH94Yo50MdS9yAD90OVM0O0

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DU'er magbana broke this story in DU's Latin America forum this afternoon:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x4423

She posted audio/video information links, as well, which should be interesting to Spanish speakers familiar with either Santiago Alvarez from Miami or Marta Beatriz Roque, a "dissident" in Cuba with hardliner "exile" friends in Miami.

[Judi Lynn]

1. Top US diplomat in Cuba funnels funds to dissidents: Havana

Top US diplomat in Cuba funnels funds to dissidents: Havana
4 hours ago

HAVANA (AFP) — The top US diplomat in Cuba personally has served as a conduit of funds delivered to dissidents aiming to oust Cuba's communist government, Havana charged Monday.

Cuba for years has accused the United States regularly of supporting dissidents in the only communist one-party regime in the Americas.

But it has never backed up its charges with detailed public accusations and purported evidence, a tense twist under the new government of President Raul Castro, 76.

Josefina Vidal, Cuba's top diplomat for issues related to the United States, told a news conference that Michael Parmly -- chief of the US Interests Section, a quasi-embassy as the countries do not have full diplomatic ties -- personally supported an alleged dissident funding network, as a "common courier."

Vidal charged the United States with working with an anti-Castro Cuban activist in Miami, Santiago Alvarez, whom she said was in jail in the United States for illegal arms possession but nonetheless was able to organize the operation providing funding and material support to dissidents in Cuba.

Alvarez "manages to get things together to send money and material support to mercenaries in Cuba with the support of the chief of the US Interests Section in Havana, Mr. Michael Parmly," Vidal charged.

"It is all the more outrageous and scandalous' that US diplomats "work as emissaries or links between a terrorist and mercenaries," Vidal said.

"One has to wonder if the government of the United States, which has made fighting terrorism the center of its foreign policy, is aware that its top diplomat in Havana is collaborating with a notorious terrorist," she said.

Vidal ruled out the idea of US diplomatic reprisals, and said Washington should "take measures to correct the behavior of its diplomats in Havana."

More:
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jEnLfvO1br8ihE6bb_a5cSgyvNQA



Marta Beatriz Roque making a statement
with former U.S. Interests section head,
James Cason looking on from the doorway.



Marta Beatriz Roque



Santiago Álvarez

[msongs]

2. The USA needs to normalize all relations with Cuba as we have with nuclear powers China/Russia nt

[Judi Lynn]

3. For any DU'ers who were following the story of the little Cuban girl who was being

pulled apart by Miami interests, as they tried to keep her from returning to Cuba, as both her mother, and her biological father wanted.

Well, the Miami Herald didn't print this story, so it was missed. Just found it, thought you'd like to see the last installment:

Cuban father pays price for custody of daughter
By LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ,AP
Posted: 2008-05-04 00:02:58

MIAMI (AP) - The 5-year-old with hazel eyes and a bouncy ponytail swung across the monkey bars as her Cuban father Rafael Izquierdo proudly watched nearby, ready to catch her.

"Look at me go Papi!" she squealed, just before she dropped into his waiting arms.

In the six months since Izquierdo regained custody of his young daughter after a high-profile court case, the two have developed a deep bond. It is one they never shared when the girl lived in Cuba with her mother, let alone after she first came to the U.S. and sparked an intense, international custody battle.

Yet in reclaiming one child, Izquierdo has found himself separated from nearly everything and everyone else he loves. He lives alone with her in the U.S., jobless - a pariah to many Cuban-Americans who cannot fathom why he would want to return with the girl to the poverty-seeped, communist island their own families fled.

Last month, Izquierdo's pregnant wife Yanara Alvarez and their 7-year-old daughter Rachel returned to Cuba so Alvarez could take advantage of the country's free medical care during their son's birth. Mother and daughter have yet to receive permission from U.S. immigration authorities to return to Miami, Izquierdo's attorney said.

Meanwhile, Izquierdo has received no guarantee that if he leaves for a weekend to visit them, he can return.

More:
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/cuban-father-pays-price-for-custody-of/n20080504000209990010

[Judi Lynn]

4. Top U.S. diplomat ferried cash to dissident: Cuba

Top U.S. diplomat ferried cash to dissident: Cuba
Mon May 19, 2008 2:56pm EDT
By Jeff Franks

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba on Monday accused the United States' top diplomat in Havana of ferrying money from a private anti-Castro exile group in Miami to a dissident in the Cuban capital.

Officials disclosed e-mails they said showed Michael Parmly, head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, acting as a go-between for at least one payment from a group headed by Santiago Alvarez, a Cuban American jailed in the United States on weapons charges, to Cuban dissident Martha Beatriz Roque.

Parmly was "a facilitator of payments, of contacts and remittances from a terrorist based in Miami to counter-revolutionaries in Cuba," Josefina Vidal of the Cuban Foreign Ministry said at a news conference.

She described his behavior as "scandalous" and called for the U.S. government to investigate illegal activities at the Interests Section. The U.S. does not have an embassy in Cuba because the two countries do not have formal diplomatic relations.

A diplomat at the Interests Section said, "It is long-standing U.S. policy to provide humanitarian assistance to the Cuban people, specifically to provide assistance to families of political prisoners who are treated poorly by their own government.

"This assistance has no political purpose, but is intended to address the day-to-day needs of families who are struggling to survive in the current system," the diplomat said.

The U.S. government openly provides federally-funded support for dissident activities, which Cuba considers an illegal act.

More:
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1955383420080519

[Judi Lynn]

5. It seems only yesterday Miami exiles made this claim: "Not enough money getting to Cuban dissidents"

Posted on Thu, May. 15, 2008
Exile group: Not enough money getting to Cuban dissidents
BY ALFONSO CHARDY

In an already charged election year when U.S. policy toward Cuba remains a key campaign issue, a prominent exile group is calling on the Bush administration to change how it operates Cuba democracy programs so that millions of dollars can reach dissidents on the island.

In the 21-page report to be released Thursday, the Cuban American National Foundation says that less than 17 percent of $65 million in federal Cuba aid funds spent during the past 10 years went to ''direct, on-island assistance.'' The bulk of the money, the report says, went to academic studies and expenses of exile organizations, mostly in Miami and Washington.
(snip)

Francisco ''Pepe'' Hernández, the foundation president, said the report was not meant as an attack on the U.S. program. ''I have been connected to these programs and these ideas from the very beginning,'' said Hernández, who wrote an opinion column published Thursday in The Herald. ``These programs have been misused, and to see that only a small amount is reaching the island certainly drives us to do something about it.''

At least two of the organizations that receive USAID money blasted the report and said it would help Cuba's communist regime.

The Cuban Democratic Directorate, or Directorio, called the report a ``smear campaign.''
''We are profoundly disappointed and dismayed that CANF has chosen this time in history to attack and lie about a fellow Cuban pro-democracy organization,'' said Orlando Gutierrez, the Miami group's national secretary.

Frank Calzón, a former foundation official who now runs the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington, accused the foundation of harboring a communist spy.

More:
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation/story/534166.html

Posted here on the 15th:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=3310795