Cuba slams Bush official over bio-weapons claim

Cuba's Fidel Castro is being blamed 
for building bio-weapons

Tuesday, October 7, 2003

HAVANA, Cuba: Provide evidence that Cuba has a germ warfare program. That's the message from Cuba's Foreign Ministry to the George Bush administration.

Cuba issued the call yesterday, four days after U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, Mr. Roger Noriega, told a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that Cuba "has at least a limited, developmental, offensive biological weapons research and development effort and is providing dual-use biotechnology to other rogue states." 

Reuters quoted Cuba's Foreign Minister, Mr. Felipe Perez Roque, as saying yesterday, "We completely and utterly reject Assistant Secretary Noriega's statement. It is a false argument used to justify the U.S. blockade of Cuba."

The minister said the accusations were aimed at winning President Bush support among Cuban exiles in Florida, a crucial state for his re-election bid next year. 

"It is scandalous that high-ranking officials in the U.S. government have to lie to that country's Congress to try to justify its discredited policy against Cuba," the foreign ministry said in a statement published by Granma, the ruling governmental newspaper.

The Bush administration, had made the same claim before the war on Iraq but has yet to find evidence to back its charge that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.  

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