NewsMax.com. Friday,
December 15, 2000
It was Cold War rhetoric déjà vu as Russia's and Communist
Cuba's leaders combined in accusing the United States of trying to dominate the
world.
Russia's President Valdimir Putin lost no time while on his visit this week
to Cuba in firing verbal warning shots across the bow of the new United States
president-elect.
Later in the day Thursday after he had sent a diplomatically correct letter
of congratulation to George W. Bush, Putin joined Cuba's President Fidel Castro
in blistering rhetorical attacks on the United States that were reminiscent of
the era in which Cuba was the Western Hemisphere ally of the Soviet Union.
That economic-political-military alliance, with Soviet missiles on the
communist island targeting American cities, came within a whisker of
precipitating a nuclear world war during the administration of President John F.
Kennedy.
According to Agence France-Presse news service:
Greeted warmly by Castro dressed in his familiar olive-green fatigues, Putin
received almost a hero's welcome as he began a three-day visit to Cuba that was
billed as a trade mission.
Trade was on the agenda, but the pair's public utterances were more in the
nature of ominous strategic warnings to Washington.
And it was not lost on Cuba watchers that Putin scheduled a symbolic visit
to a Moscow-funded electronic listening station outside Havana that monitors
U.S. submarines in the area.
Accompanying Putin on that visit was Valentin Korabelnikov, head of the
Russian General Staff's military intelligence unit that oversees the listening
station.
Putin made it clear he and Castro foresee – and welcome – the
collapse of U.S. stature as the world's superpower.
"Similar attempts at world domination were made numerous times
throughout the course of history," Putin warned, "and it is well known
how they all ended."
His remarks were underscored by the presence of Russia's No. 1 military and
diplomatic officials at his side.
Castro echoed Putin's denunciation of the United States, accusing it of "forcing
neo-liberal globalization" and lashing out at U.S.-supported international
trade bodies as "the kiss of death."
"Even in the age of colonialism and slavery," Castro said, "the
poor were not stolen from by the rich like this."
After Cuba and Russia had signed five trade and diplomacy agreements, Castro
and Putin pledged to support "sovereignty, self-governance,
non-intervention, independence and territorial integrity" in a joint
declaration.
"On almost all issues," Castro said, "our positions converge."
Putin granted Cuba a $350 million line of credit to complete work on a
nickel smelter. All profits from that joint venture are to go toward paying off
Cuba's $11 billion debt to Moscow left over from the Cold War era.
Putin Huddles With Castro
NewsMax.com. Thursday, Dec. 14, 2000
The presidents of Communist Cuba and ex-Communist Russia are conferring in
Havana to resuscitate what was once a menacing Soviet-Cuban Cold War alliance.
The Associated Press reported that Castro and Putin were conversing
animatedly through interpreters as they sped away in a Russian-built limousine
after the Russian president landed at the Cuban capital late Wednesday.
This was no perfunctory social call. Nor was it entirely a mission aimed, as
advertised, at breathing new life into a moribund economic relationship.
Significantly, the only top officials Russia's Valdimir Putin brought along
with him from Moscow were Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor
Sergeyev – neither of them known as economic heavy-lifters.
And prominent among those around Fidel Castro was Ricardo Alarcon, his point
man on Cuba-United States affairs.
Back in Moscow, Putin's foreign policy aide, Sergei Prikhodko, said that for
the trip to Cuba six documents had been prepared, including proposed agreements
on cooperation in legal affairs and health.
In its report, the AP was stressing trade, not military or strategic
affairs:
• Before the Soviet Union collapsed, it accounted for around one-fifth
of Cuba's trade.
• And Cuba still owes Russia some $11 billion from the Soviet days.
• In 1991, the two countries were engaged in trade totaling $3.6
billion.
• Now it's down to about $1 billion a year.
• This prompted Putin to say last week that Russia must improve trade
with Cuba or lose out to competitors.
• Putin let it be known that while in Cuba he wants to promote the
completion of such Soviet-era projects as an oil refinery and a nickel plant.
But, as was very much the case during the Cold War, when Russia trades with
Cuba there can follow a close military and strategic connection. Castro has
demonstrated he is quite willing to give a trading partner in Moscow more than a
strategic toe-hold in Uncle Sam's backyard.
Nor should it be any surprise that Cuban relations with the United States
are high on the list of topics Putin, Castro and their top military and
strategic officials will discuss this week before the Russian president travels
on to Canada to visit another neighbor of the United States.
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