Cuba is a bio-terror threat to United States says diplomat

Thursday, April 1, 2004

WASHINGTON, USA (AFP): A top Bush administration diplomat has renewed and refined charges that Cuba is a "terrorist and (biological weapons) threat to the United States" amid the ongoing US war on terror, and as the US presidential election looms.

John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, told Congress in written testimony Tuesday that the island "remains a terrorist and (biological weapons) threat to the United States."

"I believe the case for the existence of a developmental Cuba (biological weapons research and development) effort is strong," Bolton said.

Bolton's charge came as part of a 25-page written statement on the development and spread of nuclear, chemical and biological arms, despite the fact the Bush administration gently backed away from the same allegations after Bolton made them in May 2002 and did not offer evidence.

Tuesday, Bolton also more specifically said Cuba had been successful at hiding details of its weapons program due to data passed to Havana by convicted spy Ana Belen Montes, ex-senior Cuba analyst for the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. Montes is serving 25 years in federal prison having pleaded guilty to spying for Cuba in 2002.

Montes "participated in interagency coordination of a national intelligence estimate on (biological weapons), and passed some of our most sensitive information about Cuba back to Havana," Bolton's written testimony said. 

"Additionally, Montes' espionage materially strengthened Cuba's denial and deception efforts; the data Montes passed gave Havana ample opportunity to generate controlled information that could, via defectors and émigrés, reach Washington."

Cuba, which the US State Department lists as a state sponsor of terrorism, was outraged by the charge Bolton made in May 2002 and demanded that the US government offer proof. It did not.

On June 5, 2002 Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research Carl Ford conceded in testimony before Congress that Washington did not have evidence Havana had a full-fledged biological weapons "program" but maintained the administration was worried about Havana's capabilities.

"We never tried to suggest we had a smoking gun," Ford said at the time. Pressed as to the extent of any related US intelligence, and the difference between an alleged Cuban "effort" and a "program," Ford specifically stated that a "program" would suggest "something much more substantial that what we have seen."

Still, Bolton renewed his charges on Tuesday.

For Wayne Smith, who was the top US diplomat in Havana during president Jimmy Carter's administration: "There's no evidence whatever.

"It's more WMD. You say they have this, and there's no evidence they do, but you say it anyway," Smith told AFP, referring to the Iraq war.

"I would say all of that is quite absurd," Smith said.

In addition to the independent Center for Defense Information which visited Havana "others have traveled down, been through the biotech industry and no one finds any evidence at all that the Cubans are developing a bio-weapons system or even preparing to do such a thing," he said.

"Cuba does have a biotech industry that produces medicines and vaccines and its true that if you have that sort of infrastructure (potential exists yet) any country with the capacity to manufacture aspirin would have that capability," Smith stressed.

Havana is fiercely proud of its biotech industry's development of vaccines and medicines that are more affordable for developing countries.

The United States and Cuba do not have full diplomatic ties, and the United States has had a full economic embargo on the only communist-ruled country in the Americas since 1962.

Florida, with more than 800,000 Cuban-Americans, opened the doors of the White House to Bush in 2000 and is seen as key to his reelection bid.

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