Radio Havana Cuba-28 March 2002 Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Radio Havana Cuba - News Update - 28 March 2002 . *CUBA WILL ALLOW HUMAN RIGHTS INSPECTION, IF THE US WILL - PEREZ ROQUE *CUBAN STUDENTS HELP OUT WITH COFFEE HARVEST *FIDEL CASTRO ANNOUNCES THAT DENGUE HAS BEEN ERADICATED IN CUBA *CUBAN PRESIDENT REPEATS INVITATION FOR JIMMY CARTER TO VISIT CUBA *ISRAEL REJECTS UNANIMOUSLY APPROVED ARAB SUMMIT MIDDLE EAST PEACE PLAN *AFRICAN-AMERICAN SLAVERY REPARATIONS LAWSUIT SPARKS WIDESPREAD COMMENTARY *FOOD RIOTS RE-EMERGE IN ARGENTINA *COLOMBIAN AUTHORITIES ADMIT RIGHT WING PARAMILITARY INFILTRATION IN CONGRESS *EU COMMISSION TELLS US NOT TO DICTATE EUROPE'S ECONOMIC, POLITICAL AGENDA *Viewpoint: AFTER THE ARAB SUMMIT, IS PEACE ANY CLOSER? . *CUBA WILL ALLOW HUMAN RIGHTS INSPECTION, IF THE US WILL - PEREZ ROQUE Geneva, March 28(RHC)-- Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque has affirmed that Cuba would be willing to subject itself to a human rights inspection if the same were applied to the rest of the world, particularly the United States. Speaking at a press conference in Geneva in the context of his participation in the 58th UN Human Rights Commission, the Cuban foreign minister stressed that no one at the commission even considers presenting a resolution of condemnation against Washington's human rights record. He said neither has he encountered anyone among the numerous ministers and delegates participating in the session who understands why the US government insists on condemning Cuba while opposing any condemnation of Israeli army abuse in occupied Palestinian territories. Perez Roque said the increasing politicizing of and double standards in the Human Rights Commission has led to a climate of frustration within the UN agency. He charged that while Washington claims to be the standard-bearer of free elections and democratic rule, the US government has maneuvered to regain its lost seat in the commission without having to subject its candidate to a vote. At Washington's behest, Spain and Italy agreed to withdraw their candidates so that the US aspirant would be one of 4 seeking the only 4 vacant seats. *CUBAN STUDENTS HELP OUT WITH COFFEE HARVEST Santiago de Cuba, March 28(RHC)-- The labor of some 36 thousand Cuban students and teachers in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba, has been key in offsetting the effects of a severe drought on the region's coffee harvest. The students and teachers collected more than 500 thousand cans of about 20 pounds each in the island's eastern mountain range, the Sierra Maestra. The area is among the country's principal coffee producing regions. Because of the special harvest, the island's Ministry of Education has named Santiago de Cuba as one of the most outstanding provinces in providing financial support through manual labor. Cuban regional official, Elio Bango, told the press that more than 250 thousand cans of coffee were lost due to bad weather. The losses were not higher, he stressed, because of the quick action taken by students and teachers. Bango explained that thanks to the support of the region's students, the crisis can be resolved and recuperation will soon begin. The Cuban official said that high productivity and high quality marked the harvest. These "schools in the countryside" are an essential part of Cuba's education system which stresses linking work with study. Other students participated in clearing sugar cane fields, working in urban gardens and other types of physical labor. *FIDEL CASTRO ANNOUNCES THAT DENGUE HAS BEEN ERADICATED IN CUBA Havana, March 28(RHC)-- Cuban president, Fidel Castro, as announced that dengue fever has been eradicated on the island. Speaking last night in Havana's Karl Marx Theater, the Cuban leader revealed that the disease's carrier, the Aedes Aegypti mosquito, has been practically exterminated. Fidel Castro told the gathered participants in the massive anti-dengue campaign launched on the island last January 11, that the index of the mosquito infestation had been reduced to just one house for every ten thousand homes. That number is considered to be well under the acceptable rate by international institutions. President Castro noted that the success of the campaign has been due to the efforts of thousands of Cubans. He explained that the campaign was launched in response to a worrisome situation in the country at the beginning of the year when cases of dengue began rapidly increasing. In the island's battle against the mosquito, more than 700 thousand workers, students and youth leaders from throughout the country were mobilized. Brigades fumigated every house and building in the capital numerous times and collected more than two million square meters of waste materials in an operation that cost more than 12 million dollars. During the outbreak, four deaths were reported. The Cuban leader announced that two new phases had begun in the anti-mosquito battle. The first, which will last three months, consists of continued clean-up and elimination of mosquito breeding grounds. The second phase will be systematic prevention to guarantee medium and long-term protection against another outbreak of dengue in Cuba. *CUBAN PRESIDENT REPEATS INVITATION FOR JIMMY CARTER TO VISIT CUBA Havana, March 28(RHC)-- Cuban president Fidel Castro Thursday night reiterated an invitation to former US president, Jimmy Carter, to visit the island. "We want him to see our country," said President Castro, "if he wishes we'll fill Revolution Square with people so he can make all the criticism he likes." The Cuban leader, speaking at the closing of a campaign to eradicate dengue fever in Cuba, commented that the invitation had not been issued in order to receive support from Carter. He said that Carter's administration had been motivated by ethics, possibly of religious origin, and that it had made positive steps to overcome differences between Cuba and the United States. President Castro reiterated his invitation to Jimmy Carter noting that the former US president had called him by telephone during the "rafter's" crisis in l994, offering to mediate, but that the US administration had not allowed it. During the Carter administration, Cuba and the United States decided to open "Interests Sections" in both countries to attend to problems that had accumulated after Washington broke off relations in l961. *ISRAEL REJECTS UNANIMOUSLY APPROVED ARAB SUMMIT MIDDLE EAST PEACE PLAN Beirut, Tel Aviv, March 28(RHC)-- What has been called perhaps the most important and crucial Arab Summit has unanimously approved a Saudi Arabia Middle East peace initiative, but Israel has rejected it as Tel Aviv prepares for reprisals in the wake of another devastating Palestinian suicide bomb attack. Arab leaders endorsed an offer of peace, normal relations and security to Israel in exchange for ending its occupation of their lands, recognition of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital and the return of Palestinian refugees. But Israel has rejected a refugee return, while stating that a return to the borders of 1967 would lead to the destruction of the Israeli state. Even called positive by the United States government, the peace plan is nevertheless threatened from another front. With 20 people killed and close to 200 wounded in a Palestinian suicide bomb attack at a hotel in Israel, Israeli troops were amassing artillery near Ramallah in what is expected to be perhaps the most ferocious military reprisal since the Intifada began. In another widely commented development at the summit, Arab leaders categorically rejected military strikes against Iraq, while the gathering saw what is being called a spectacular rapprochement between Iraq and Kuwait. Baghdad promised to not invade Kuwait in the future, while the two countries decided to work together on the issue of disappeared prisoners of war. *AFRICAN-AMERICAN SLAVERY REPARATIONS LAWSUIT SPARKS WIDESPREAD COMMENTARY Washington, March 28(RHC)-- A class-action lawsuit filed in the United States on behalf of 35 million descendants of African-American slaves against three companies with ties to the slave trade is generating widespread commentary. Attorneys, activists and observers are asserting that the legal action is aimed as much at shaking up US society as at winning financial compensation for 300 years of slavery and 140 years of post-slavery discrimination, brutality and disenfranchisement. The move last Tuesday in a federal court is the first of what is expected to be a rash of reparations-related lawsuits that have been prepared over the last several years. Salih Booker, director of the Washington-based advocacy group Africa Action, stated that all the suits are going to create controversy and therefore encourage more discussion about slavery and its impact. Booker is just one of many who assert that the cases were designed not only to win monetary damages, but also to provoke greater public debate and recognition of the history and pervasive effects of slavery on US society in general, and Black citizens in particular. Another team that has been preparing a class action suit for the past 18 months, the Reparations Assessment Group - headed by Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree - stated that its aim is a change in America and full recognition and a remedy of how slavery stigmatized, raped, murdered and exploited millions of Africans through no fault of their own. The organization 'N'COBRA', which has been mobilizing African-Americans, is expected to file lawsuits over the next year. One of the team of attorneys that filed the first lawsuit this week, Roger Wareham, said this is a case about wealth built on the backs and from the sweat of African slaves. In the face of arguments pointing to the decades that have passed since slavery was abolished, African-American activists point out that after emancipation, many Blacks were forced to become sharecroppers, victims of debt bondage and Ku Klux Klan terror, and continued to suffer from racial inequities, discrimination and disenfranchisement up to the present. *FOOD RIOTS RE-EMERGE IN ARGENTINA Buenos Aires, March 28(RHC)-- Food riots have erupted once again in Argentina, with several warehouses, food trucks and shopping centers looted in the provinces of Buenos Aires, Neuquen, Chaco, Cordoba, Rosario and Santa Fe, while police step up protection of other establishments. In one of at least five lootings on the outskirts of the capital, more 2,000 kilograms of meat were extracted from a butcher shop, though there have also been reports of stolen household appliances and other goods. Violent clashes were reported in Neuquen, where riot police injured several people as numerous supermarkets and warehouse either shuttered up their establishments or beefed up security. *COLOMBIAN AUTHORITIES ADMIT RIGHT WING PARAMILITARY INFILTRATION IN CONGRESS Bogotá, March 28(RHC)-- Authorities in Colombia have admitted that right wing paramilitaries infiltrated Congress in the country's recent legislative elections, as leftist guerrillas denounced over two weeks ago. Colombian Interior Minister Armando Estrada has announced an investigation of elected legislators who were sponsored by the death squads, and whose constituencies were forced to vote for them under paramilitary threats. One day after the March 10 elections, the paramilitaries themselves proclaimed their first political triumph - announcing that they had garnered 35 percent of the 102 Senate and 166 Lower House seats that were up for grabs. Simultaneously, the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces charged that the new Congress is permeated with a spirit of corruption and paramilitarism. Ten days later, opposition presidential candidate Horacio Serpa charged that the paramilitaries were now actively campaigning for their own presidential candidate - in an implicit reference to independent right wing hopeful Alvaro Uribe, who has promised to adopt a hard line against leftist rebels. *EU COMMISSION TELLS US NOT TO DICTATE EUROPE'S ECONOMIC, POLITICAL AGENDA Brussels, March 28(RHC)-- The European Union has issued what is being called a defiant warning to the United States not to try to dictate the EU's economic and political agenda. Calling on President George W. Bush to pull back from the brink of a full-blown transatlantic trade war on steel, European Commission president Romano Prodi - in what the British news daily The Guardian called an unusually robust outburst - stressed that Europe would defy Washington in a variety of policy areas. Coinciding with the commission formally adopting Wednesday its own defensive tariffs on imported steel, Prodi said the EU would not tolerate US protectionism on steel, would take on Washington over the Kyoto protocol on global warming, and would press ahead with a satellite navigation system objected to by the Pentagon. Prodi said "it's about Europe standing on its own feet and not letting someone else dictate our agenda," adding that the situation over the steel dispute could get worse. The European Commission president also said the EU was in the dark about what military action the US intended to take against Iraq and had serious reservations about targeting Saddam Hussein, reported The Guardian. *Viewpoint: AFTER THE ARAB SUMMIT, IS PEACE ANY CLOSER? The summit of the Arab countries finished with the adoption by the 22 countries present of the Peace Plan proposed by Saudi Arabia to Israel. Although this has been adopted as a common project by all the Arab countries present, Israel has rejected the final outcome. Even though the summit proceeded with the notable absence the President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, King Abdullah of Jordan and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whose movements have been impeded by an arbitrary decision made by Tel Aviv, the summit has taken a significant step towards peace in the Middle East, but the possibilities of success are precarious. At the same time as the Arab leaders were closing the meeting, the Israeli army was clearing all foreign visitors from the Ramallah city, where Yasser Arafat is under virtual house arrest. The neighborhood has been surrounded by armored cars with the objective of developing a huge military operation against the population that lives there. Hours before the meeting, the Israeli Minister of Defense, Benjamin Ben Eliecer, was talking about destroying the President of the Palestine National Authority, Yassr Arafat, as if they had the right to make this kind of statement. The Israeli operations in Ramallah are a blow against the Arab peace plan, whose nations propose normal relations with Tel Aviv, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the territories occupied since 1967, the return of the Palestinian refugees, including the almost three million that have been living outside their country since 1948, and the recognition of the State of Palestine, with West Jerusalem as its capital. Everybody regrets the murder of innocents and this is occurring on both sides of the conflict, but the historic responsibility rests solely with Israel. Whatever brings peace to the Middle East will be good news for the entire planet, but to make it happen is the common responsibility of all nations and in particular that of the powerful countries, whose weapons and support fan the flames that also can burn those they should be protecting and their allies in the zone, something that no one can ignore nor forget. (c) 2002 Radio Habana Cuba, NY Transfer News. All rights reserved. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= rhc-eng-27858 2002-Mar-30 12:12:28