BOGOTA, Colombia – Relations between Cuba and the United States “are at their worst moment” and never before has the island confronted such an aggressive administration in Washington, D.C., the speaker of the Cuban parliament said.
Ricardo Alarcon told Colombia’s RCN television that U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration had dedicated itself clearly and explicitly “to destroying Cuba and taking control of it.”
Bush has established a government commission to aid the transition to a “free Cuba” and has tightened the 44-year-old economic embargo against Fidel Castro’s regime, but Washington, D.C. denies any bellicose intentions toward the communist-ruled island “But besides that, (it is) resorting to the worst methods,” added Alarcon, going on to mention the recent “unusual” release from custody of anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles.
Posada, a Cuban-born Venezuelan citizen, has been charged in Venezuela for a bomb attack that brought down a Cuban airliner in 1976 killing all 73 people on board.
In addition, Posada stands accused in Cuba of carrying out several bomb attacks on Havana hotels in 1997, one of which killed an Italian tourist.
The Miami Herald recently reported that U.S. FBI agents traveled to Havana to investigate the 1990s hotel blasts that killed the Italian tourist and that a U.S. federal grand jury in New Jersey could indict Posada in connection with those attacks.
The 79-year-old former CIA operative is known to have played a role in supplying the Contras in Nicaragua, and declassified U.S. intelligence documents highlight suspicions that he was involved with the 1976 airliner bombing.
