Rice Tries to Calm Cuba’s Fear of Invasion
In a televised message beamed into Cuba, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice offered the full support of the United States in a transition to democracy while promising to respect the sovereignty of the Cuban people.
Carried on TV Martí, the government-financed service that broadcasts to Cuba from the United States, Ms. Rice tried to calm fears that Washington planned to intervene directly in Cuba in the wake of President Fidel Castro’s illness and his decision to hand off power provisionally to his brother Raúl, who is 75.
“The United States respects your aspirations as sovereign citizens,” Ms. Rice said. “And we will stand with you to secure your rights — to speak as you choose, to think as you please, to worship as you wish and to choose your leaders, freely and fairly, in democratic elections.”
She called for release of political prisoners, restoration of fundamental rights and a transition that would quickly lead to multiparty elections.
The only word about health of President Castro, 79, came yesterday from the Cuban health minister, who said he was recovering well from complicated abdominal surgery and would return to office soon.
But news agencies were unable to verify the information, because the Cuban government has been turning back foreign journalists.
The lack of independent information has led to speculation about the true state of Mr. Castro’s health. But the Cuban news media scoffed at the notion that anything was wrong, though neither Castro brother has been seen in public all week.
The official government paper, Granma, derided President Bush’s statement of support to the Cuban people on Thursday, calling it “tin pot rhetoric.”
Reuters, which operates a bureau in Havana, tried to send in several reporters this week to reinforce the two full-time journalists it has working in Cuba.
“They entered on tourist visas and then sought formal accreditation,” said Alistair Scrutton, Reuters’s editor for Latin America. “The Cuban authorities told us that they should leave, and they’ve done so.”
Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, based in New York, said in an interview that the group had heard from several journalists who had been stopped by the authorities at José Martí International Airport in Havana because they were trying to enter the country with tourist visas.
“We don’t have a specific number, but we certainly heard that it was widespread,” Mr. Simon said.
The German news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported that more than 150 international journalists had been blocked from entering since the transfer of power to Raúl Castro on Monday night.
The German agency quoted an unidentified Cuban official at the international press center in Havana as saying that while there was great interest around the world in what was happening in Cuba, “nowhere on the planet can a journalist report with a tourist visa.”
At the Cuban interests section of the Swiss Embassy in Washington, Joaquín Gutiérrez, the second secretary, said the office had been inundated with request for journalist work visas. He said that the applications were being processed and sent to Havana, and that it would take up to a month to get a reply.
Cuban officials have routinely denied requests for journalist visas from some American news organizations if they have written negatively about President Castro or the situation in Cuba. Other requests for visas simply go unanswered.
The New York Times has applied repeatedly for journalist visas to Cuba in the last two years, with infrequent success.
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“The United States respects your aspirations as sovereign citizens,” Ms. Rice said. “And we will stand with you to secure your rights — to speak as you choose, to think as you please, to worship as you wish and to choose your leaders, freely and fairly, in democratic elections.”
Always playing the Big Brother. Why do I find that a complete utter bull.