From roadrunner@earthling.net Thu Oct 1 14:15 EDT 1998 Received: from goose.prod.itd.earthlink.net (goose.prod.itd.earthlink.net [207.217.120.18]) by polaris.net (8.8.8/8.7.6) with ESMTP id OAA11679 for ; Thu, 1 Oct 1998 14:15:23 -0400 (EDT) Received: from earthling.net (sdn-ar-002flspetP319.dialsprint.net [168.191.92.96]) by goose.prod.itd.earthlink.net (8.8.7/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA19309; Thu, 1 Oct 1998 11:14:45 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <3613C939.414E14B8@earthling.net> Date: Thu, 01 Oct 1998 14:26:01 -0400 From: Michael Canney X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.02 [en]C-DIAL (Win95; U) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Brett Canney CC: Dale Younce , Desi Saludes , DON and Jane THOMPSON , Doran Cushing , Elaine Scanlon , John Sugg , Kermit Rose , "karen.saum" , Maria Martinez , Meg Keller , Reese Kennedy , Richard Stoddard , Sara Winslow , Shreeram Krishnaswami , Will Eickholt , Willie & Kitty Burton Subject: [Fwd: Cuba news] Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------70082AFC927E8B60A219ACC7" Content-Length: 13812 Status: RO This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------70082AFC927E8B60A219ACC7 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Friends: This edition includes an article reporting Cuba's announcement that the Cuban nuclear plant construction is postponed indefinitely, and that Cuba no longer considers nuclear power a viable solution to their short-term energy shortage. Please let me know if you already subscribe to the free Companero Cuba news mailing; I have tried to avoid sending this to people I know already receive it. Also, let me know if you'd rather NOT receive Cuba news items, please. Always feel free to forward any interesting news, web links, etc. A Cuba Vive! website is in the works and should be online within a few weeks. -MSC --------------70082AFC927E8B60A219ACC7 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Received: from rmx09.globecomm.net ([165.251.8.95]) by condor.prod.itd.earthlink.net (8.8.7/8.8.5) with ESMTP id JAA16830 for ; Thu, 1 Oct 1998 09:24:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from smv04.globecomm.net by rmx09.globecomm.net (8.9.1/8.8.0) with SMTP id MAA11506 ; Thu, 1 Oct 1998 12:24:04 -0400 (EDT) Received: from camel8.mindspring.com (camel8.mindspring.com [207.69.200.58]) by smv04.globecomm.net (8.9.1a/8.9.0) with ESMTP id MAA02602 for ; Thu, 1 Oct 1998 12:24:19 -0400 (EDT) Received: from kenneth-weeks (user-38lcces.dialup.mindspring.com [209.86.49.220]) by camel8.mindspring.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id MAA32699; Thu, 1 Oct 1998 12:02:15 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199810011602.MAA32699@camel8.mindspring.com> From: "=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Compa=F1ero?=" To: soyche@mailexcite.com Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1998 12:02:12 -5 X-Distribution: Moderate MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Cuba an alternative economic model... Priority: normal Minister hails Cuba as alternative economic model 02:36 p.m Sep 30, 1998 Eastern By Pascal Fletcher HAVANA, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Cuba's Economy Minister said on Wednesday his country was showing the world during a global financial crisis that development could be achieved without resorting to a ``neo-liberal'' market economy. But at the same time, Jose Luis Rodriguez avoided giving details about the current state of Cuba's economy, which has suffered a triple blow this year of a record low sugar harvest, a severe drought in eastern provinces, and a mauling last week by Hurricane Georges, which damaged crops and infrastructure. Rodriguez told a seminar in Havana that Cuba's controlled and gradual opening to foreign tourism and investment and its cautious adoption of market economy mechanisms -- but not a full market economy -- made it an exception in the prevailing world economic order. ``Beyond the difficulties that we face, our country has demonstrated that things can be done, that we can resist ... that the way forward is not only the path of neo-liberalism, or of the market economy,'' he said, addressing delegates representing local community groups from several nations. ``We know that we are in this sense a counterbalancing factor against the policy currently being followed in the world, (a policy) which is leading it to disaster,'' he added. His words reflected a recent propaganda offensive launched by President Fidel Castro which seeks to present Cuba, its one-party communist system and centrally-planned socialist economy, as a viable alternative to western-style capitalism. Castro and other senior Cuban officials have been putting forward the view that the current crisis gripping world financial markets and emerging economies like Russia is proof of the failure of ``neo-liberal,'' free-market economics. They present this as a vindication of Cuba's refusal so far to abandon Communism and embrace capitalism. While Rodriguez hailed the Cuban government's economic policy in his speech, when pressed by foreign reporters afterward, he was far less forthcoming in giving up-to-date details about Cuba's economic situation. On top of a slump in sugar production this year to the lowest level in 50 years, the Caribbean island has had to cope with a severe drought that has ravaged food and export crops in five eastern provinces. This situation has been further complicated by Hurricane Georges' swing across the island last week, which Castro said had inflicted crop damage that would cost the government at least ``several dozens of millions of dollars'' in additional food spending. Nevertheless, maintaining the usually upbeat tone with which Cuban officials respond to questions about the economy, Rodriguez insisted the Cuban economy would grow this year, although he did not give a figure. He said the government ``did not renounce its aspiration'' to achieve its original economic growth target for 1998, set last December, of between 2.5 and 3.5 percent. Apart from sugar, he added, practically all of the island's productive and export sectors were growing by some degree or other. Tourism, for example, would increase its gross hard currency earnings to $1.8 billion from $1.5 billion last year. But many foreign analysts and businessmen and women working in Cuba believe growth this year will fall well short of the official target and may reach only one percent or less. A fall in world prices for Cuba's main exports of sugar and nickel have also cut back the island's hard-currency earnings. Asked about nickel export earnings, Rodriguez said they had been reduced by the low prices by ``several dozens of millions of dollars'' but he could not give a precise figure. He added that lower world oil prices had helped to ease Cuba's oil import bill but not by enough to fully compensate the lower export earnings in sugar and nickel. U.S. denounces charges against Cuban dissidents 06:19 p.m Sep 30, 1998 Eastern WASHINGTON, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Cuba's decision to charge four political dissidents with sedition revealed the communist island's ``utter disregard'' for world opinion, the U.S. State Department said on Wednesday. A Cuban prosecutor is seeking five-year and six-year jail sentences for the island's four best-known dissident prisoners, their relatives and legal representatives said last week. The four, whose case has been a focus of international pressure on the government of President Fidel Castro, had been jailed without charge for the last 14 months. ``This self-condemning action by the Cuban government starkly reveals its utter disregard of the international community, which has unanimously urged that the four be released,'' State Department spokesman James Foley said. The four -- Vladimiro Roca, Martha Beatriz Roque, Felix Bonne and Rene Gomez Manzano -- were detained on July 16, 1997, after issuing a document criticising Cuba's one-party political system and calling for democratic changes. Foley said the four had been held in inhumane conditions, with inadequate medical care. ``They have been denied their fundamental rights and the treatment that common decency demands,'' he told a news briefing. ``Their only crime was to speak the truth about the repression of freedom in Cuba, to criticise the government's failed economic policies, and to call for peaceful democratic change,'' he said. Castro halts work on nuclear reactor It won't restart for `a long time,' he says HAVANA -- (AFP) -- Cuban President Fidel Castro has announced that work on the country's Juragua nuclear reactor, which was begun with Soviet aid, has been suspended indefinitely. It will be ``a long time, a very long time'' before construction is restarted, Castro said Monday in a speech to the Fifth National Congress of Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. But he attacked U.S. hostility to the project, saying Washington was prepared to cooperate on nuclear technology with North Korea and sell nuclear technology to China. The announcement appeared to mark the end of the project and the accompanying political wrangle with Washington. Although work has been suspended on Juragua since 1992, a few months after the Soviet Union collapsed, Cuban authorities periodically discussed resurrecting the project, provoking protests from Washington. In March of last year Moscow alluded to the possibility of a resumption of work on the reactor, although it has not taken any action in the following months. At this point, the Cuban government no longer considers nuclear power the solution to the island's chronic shortage of electricity. Workers still maintain the construction site in Cienfuegos province on Cuba's southern coast, using a Russian grant of $30 million made in 1993. The reactor, begun in 1980, has cost $1 billion so far, and it would cost an additional $750 million and four years to finish it, according to official estimates. Washington is fiercely opposed to having a nuclear reactor less than 200 miles from the Florida Keys. But the Cubans have always argued that the technology of the Juragua reactor is different from Chernobyl and that their security measures would prevent a repetition of the 1986 Ukrainian disaster in the Caribbean. SPANISH BUSINESS DELEGATION VISITS CUBA Havana, September 25 (RHC) After three days of conversations with their Cuban counterparts, a delegation of Spanish business executives from Madrid, wound up its visit to the island. The delegation, which included representatives of some 20 Spanish companies, was sponsored by Madrid's Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Delegation members told the press in Havana that bilateral ties and cooperation between the countries is expected to increase by 15 per cent next year. Some 120 Spanish companies are currently based in Cuba, among them three banks and 60 international economic associations mounted with Spanish capital. MINISTER FROM EQUATORIAL GUINEA ENDS VISIT TO CUBA Havana, September 25 (RHC)-- Equatorial Guinea's Minister of Education, Science and Francophonia, Maria Teresa Ayoro Mguen, concluded a three day working visit to Cuba on Thursday. During her visit, the Minister from the west African nation signed a cooperation accord between Equatorial Guinea and Cuba, in the areas of primary education and the media. Minister Maria Teresa Ayoro Mguena also toured numerous Cuban schools and universities. 5TH CONGRESS OF THE COMMITTEES FOR THE DEFENSE OF THE REVOLUTION GETS UNDERWAY IN HAVANA Havana, September 25 (RHC)-- In the midst of the emergency and tension created by the devastation wrought by Hurricane Georges on Cuba's eastern provinces, the 5th Congress of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, CDR, gets underway on Friday in the Cuban capital. Among the topics examined during the three day meeting will be ways to stem crime in the island's major cities. A document entitled: "For the Unity We Defend", will serve as a basis for debate on questions of safety, health and education and food on a neighborhood level. In addition, the congress is expected to reinstate all night neighborhood crime watches which were eliminated 11 years ago. Legality and social order is another topic touched upon in the CDR document, which states that in order for the country to overcome its economic crisis order and discipline are necessary. The CDR paper also urges members to help the government control illegal sales of homes as well as protecting scarce material resources. And finally the CDR document which will be debated this weekend in Havana, urges CDR members to continue giving generous blood donations, an activity sponsored by the island's Health Ministry since 1962. The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution is a grassroots organization found on each neighborhood block and in all large apartment buildings to which any Cuban 14 year old and over can belong. In addition to its neighbor crime watch and blood donation campaigns, CDRs are also active in health campaigns including organizing vaccinations both for humans and household pets. THE PRESIDENT OF CUBAN WOMEN'S FEDERATION VISITS CHILE Havana, September 25 (RHC)-- The President of the Cuban Women's Federation, Vilma Espin, arrived in Santiago de Chile Friday to attend the 8th Summit of First Ladies and Women Representatives of the Americas. The encounter is scheduled to run from October 28th through the 30th. Delegates from many countries of the hemisphere will discuss several issues of common interest. CUBAN DELEGATION WINDS UP VISIT TO FRANCE Havana, September 25 (RHC)-- Cuba has potential for development, and France has the willingness to continue working to enhance bilateral trade. The statement was made by the French Secretary of State for Foreign Trade, Jacque Dondoux in Paris, France, during a meeting with Cuban Foreign Trade Minister, Ricardo Cabrisas, aimed at analyzing the current status of bilateral relations. Cabrisas is part of the Cuban delegation, headed by Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage, which will also visit Italy. On Thursday, the Cuban Foreign Trade Minister attended the presentation of three new Cuban brands in the French capital. The French government has ratified its support for Cuba's participation, as observer, in negotiations to achieve a new agreement of the Lome Convention. The Cuban delegation wound up its visit to France on Friday. |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| |||| ***Cuba Information Access *** |||| The current events in La Republica de Cuba... |||| Where else are you going to get it ? |||| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| --------------70082AFC927E8B60A219ACC7--