Radio Havana Cuba-04 June 2002 Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Radio Havana Cuba - News Update - 04 June 2002 . *TECNOTUR 2002 OPENS TUESDAY IN THE CUBAN CAPITAL *CUBAN HIGHER EDUCATION MINISTER CONCLUDES VISIT TO DOMINICAN REPUBLIC *CUBA IS AN EXAMPLE OF HOPE AND HUMAN PROGRESS *MONUMENT TO JOSE MARTI WILL BE DEDICATED IN ECUADOR *WHITE HOUSE STALLING ON COMPLIANCE WITH SENATE SUBPOENA ON ENRON DOCUMENTS *ARGENTINA: RECORD JOB LOSSES AS GOVT PUSHES AHEAD TO COMPLY WITH IMF DEMADNS *ENVIRONMENTALISTS ASTONISHED AT US POSITION ON GLOBAL WARMING *FRANCE: LE PEN AGAIN ACCUSED OF TORTURE DURING WAR AGAINST ALGERIA *Viewpoint: BATLLE BOTCHES IT AGAIN . *TECNOTUR 2002 OPENS TUESDAY IN THE CUBAN CAPITAL Havana, June 4 (RHC)-- With the participation of 120 commercial firms from nine nations, the 14th International Trade Fair of Technologies and Products for the Tourism Industry opened today at the Pabexpo Pavilion in Havana. The trade fair offers opportunities for potential sellers to the tourist industry to meet with their clients in Cuba. Organizers of TECNOTUR say that Cuba's tourism industry has a growing market for products and services, including advanced technologies that will help to continue investment programs across the island. This year's participants include more firms in the area of equipment for restaurants and food supplies, including the Cuban Ministry of Agriculture. The annual tourism industry trade fair also allows foreign firms to display their products -- ranging from major lines of highly-advanced automated systems for tourist trade-related services, computer technology applied to tourism, equipment and supplies for swimming pools, plus audio and video systems. The 14th International Trade Fair of Technologies and Products for the Tourism Industry -- TECNOTUR 2002 -- runs through Friday, June 7th. *CUBAN HIGHER EDUCATION MINISTER CONCLUDES VISIT TO DOMINICAN REPUBLIC Havana, June 4 (RHC)-- Cuban Minister of Higher Education Fernando Vecino Alegret has returned to Havana after a four-day visit to the Dominican Republic. During his stay in Santo Domingo, the Cuban official met with Dominican President Hipolito Mejia on two occasions. The Cuban minister of higher education also visited with his counterpart, Andres Reyes, as well as Dominican Foreign Affairs Minister Hugo Tolentino and Culture Secretary Tony Raful. Fernando Vecino Alegret toured the Catholic University and Cibao's Technological Institute, located in Santiago de los Caballeros -- the second most important city in the country -- and O and M University in San Francisco de Macoris, as well as the Santiago Technological University in Cotui. During his visit, the Caribbean University in Santo Domingo honored Vecino as Doctor Honoris Causa, where he addressed nearly 200 students during their graduation ceremony. The Cuban minister of higher education signed cooperation agreements with the Dominican Republic, allowing university professors to exchange postgraduate courses and collaborate in research. *CUBA IS AN EXAMPLE OF HOPE AND HUMAN PROGRESS Havana, June 4 (RHC)-- Cuba is an example of hope and human progress, according to the president of the Youth League of the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa. Malusi Gigaba is visiting the island, leading a delegation of young people from South Africa. The ANC delegation toured the Latin American School of Medicine, located on the outskirts of Havana, and talked with medical students from a number of African countries. The medical school offers free scholarships to young people from the Third World. Invited by Cuba's Union of Young Communists (UJC), the African youth will wrap up their official visit on Thursday, the 6th. *MONUMENT TO JOSE MARTI WILL BE DEDICATED IN ECUADOR Quito, June 4 (RHC)-- A monument to Cuba's National Hero, José Martí, will be erected in the Ecuadorian city of Mitad del Mundo -- considered the main tourist and cultural complex of that South American country. The sculpture, by Andrés González, will be three meters high and will be placed next to other statues of Latin American heroes in the city square. The sculptor said the work will be inaugurated January 28th next year -- on the 150th anniversary of the birth of Cuba's most universal citizen. Andrés González is the sculptor of the José Martí monument at the Anti-Imperialist Tribune on the Malecon in Havana -- pointing his accusing figure directly at the U.S. Interests Section. During a visit to this Ecuadorian city, González told reporters that he was impressed with the solidarity shown toward the Cuban Revolution and interest in the island's health care and educational systems. He also expressed his shock at how much misinformation is being disseminated about Cuba. Mitad del Mundo -- which literally means Half of the World -- is located on the imaginary equatorial line that divides the planet into the northern and southern hemispheres. The main monument in the city is topped by a globe, which sits on the Equator at 0 Latitude. *WHITE HOUSE STALLING ON COMPLIANCE WITH SENATE SUBPOENA ON ENRON DOCUMENTS Washington, June 4 (RHC) -- The White House has stalled in compliance with a Senate subpoena demanding copies of documents pertaining to the Enron scandal. The Bush administration only allowed Senator Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, to come over and take a look at some of them. But Lieberman's aides said the e-mail copies and other documents made available did not come close to complying with the subpoena, charging that the restrictions imposed suggest an effort to stall. The Senate committee wants more information about the longtime personal and financial ties that President Bush and top administration officials had with Enron, which in December filled the biggest, scandal-ridden bankruptcy case in history. Those ties have led to widespread suspicion that Enron and other major corporations played a key role in drawing up the Bush administration's national energy program under the direction of Vice President Richard Cheney. Lieberman had previously accused the White House of "trying to set a precedent of broad secrecy with information the public has a right to know." The Executive Office of the President made available 1,745 pages and Vice President Cheney's office allowed the committee's staff to review 432 pages. The two received separate subpoenas on May 22, with a deadline of noon Monday. Lieberman extended the deadline by 24 hours at the request of the committee's ranking Republican member, Senator Fred Thompson. The White House is refusing to hand the documents over physically until an agreement is made to restrict their release to the public. *ARGENTINA: RECORD JOB LOSSES AS GOVT PUSHES AHEAD TO COMPLY WITH IMF DEMADNS Buenos Aires, June 4 (RHC) -- A survey in Argentina has detected another record job-loss rate as President Eduardo Duhalde continues to promote an International Monetary Fund public spending slash that will bring even more unemployment. According to the local news daily Clarín, the private consulting firm Tendencias Económicas - or Economic Tendencies - found that 115,000 jobs were eliminated in May. That reportedly brings to 300,000 the number of Argentines who have lost their jobs so far this year, constituting a 2,300 percent increase with respect to the same period last year. Layoffs in Argentina have now surpassed those that occurred in 1995 in the aftermath of Mexico's financial crack, and those that occurred in 1999 following Brazil's economic crisis. Unemployment in Argentina is now estimated to be at 25 percent, the highest in the country's history. Meanwhile, President Duhalde has managed to garner the support of 14 of the country's 24 provinces for drastic IMF public spending cutbacks that some believe could lead to an even more violent social explosion than the uprising in December that toppled then-President Fernando de la Rua. Another four provinces are expected to adhere to the pact in the coming days, moving Duhalde closer to complying with a series of International Monetary Fund demands that have sparked outrage not only among the opposition, but also among some of the president's own allies. *ENVIRONMENTALISTS ASTONISHED AT US POSITION ON GLOBAL WARMING Washington, June 4 (RHC) -- Environmentalists have reacted with shock and disbelief over the George W. Bush administration's affirmation that people will just have to learn to live with global warming. The administration, in an environmental report secretively sent to the United Nations last Friday, has for the first time admitted that there is in fact a man-made greenhouse effect that will have a negative impact on nature. But the report claimed that nothing can be done about it - that human beings will have to adapt. Debbie Boger, a spokeswoman for the Sierra Club, called the White House stance "irresponsible." David Donniger, policy director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's climate center, stated that there is no indication that the Bush administration has absorbed what global warming actually means, adding that the government's mouth speaks and the ears don't hear. He said one always hopes they'll "wake up and smell the carbon," but that he didn't see any sign of it. One of the most irate reactions came from environmentalist Molly Ivins, a steady contributor to alternative web sites on the environment. Ivins wrote that the First Rule of Holes is that when you are in one, you should stop digging, that to keep right on doing what is already causing disastrous consequences is either insane or profoundly stupid. Noting that the Bush administration is pushing the rightwing legal doctrine that whenever the government does something that reduces the value of one's property, one has the right to sue, Ivins suggested that everyone begin to sue the government for the destruction of property value caused by global warming. *FRANCE: LE PEN AGAIN ACCUSED OF TORTURE DURING WAR AGAINST ALGERIA London, Paris, June 4 (RHC) -- France's ultra-rightwing presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen has again been accused of committing torture during his country's colonial war against Algeria. Evidence gathered and published Tuesday by the British news daily The Guardian, and eyewitness accounts by his alleged victims published Monday in the French news daily Le Monde, have revealed details of the torture campaign that Le Pen, as a 29-year-old lieutenant, is accused of being part of. His accusers have charged that electrocution, beatings, rape and water tortures were used by Le Pen or his soldiers as he led a special military intelligence unit. The unit participated in an eight-day operation in the Algiers casbah that went down in history as "The Battle of Algiers." At her home in a poor neighborhood in the western part of Algiers, Ghaniya Merouane - one of several cases cited by The Guardian and Le Monde - had trouble containing her tears as she recalled the day Lieutenant Le Pen and his men entered her family's home, with Le Pen beginning the torture session. She told The Guardian how she recalled seeing her father and two brothers beaten and given electric shocks on Le Pen's instructions. The father and one of the brothers, after being arrested and taken to a notorious torture center, became two of between 3,000 - according to the French - and 40,000, according to the Algerians, who were never seen again as a result of the colonial war. Le Pen has sued most people who have accused him of being a torturer. He won several cases before losing to both a historian, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, and the Socialist former prime minister Michel Rocard, in separate cases last year. One of the pieces of evidence against him comes from an interview he himself gave to Combat newspaper in 1962. He told the newspaper he had carried out torture because "exceptional measures" were needed to trace terrorist bombers. The Guardian reported that the apparent enthusiasm for torture shown by the then-lieutenant, who had volunteered for a tour of duty in Algeria to seek glory and medals that would further his political career, now threatens to seriously harm his reputation. *Viewpoint: BATLLE BOTCHES IT AGAIN Monday's comments by the Uruguayan president, Jorge Batlle, that Argentines were thieves and that their president had no idea where he was going, have received the regional scorn they deserve. The problem, however, is not so much what Batlle said - a nasty tirade that deserves contempt - but the fact that he said it in the first place. Argentina's crisis is nothing to poke fun at. People are suffering great privations and its president, Eduardo Duhalde, for all his misplaced efforts to drag his country into an IMF brokered deal, should be advised rather than hindered. If Uruguay is suffering the effects of the banking meltdown in Argentina, then guidance not insults should be offered. Jorge Batlle's attack was, of course, self-serving. He had just emerged from the opening of a school to be battered with rotten fruit and spittle for, as the darling of the IMF, he has imposed the financial institution's stringent structural adjustment requirements upon the working people of his country. The privations being suffered by the Argentines are ones Batlle seeks to visit upon his own people to protect his good standing with the IMF and Washington. He was rewarded for his condemnation of Cuba in Geneva in April by receiving $3 billion in IMF aid, no doubt with a little prod from the Bush administration. His modus operandi at that time was similar: he grandly broke diplomatic relations with Cuba and then said that he had really only meant to reduce connections to a consular level and didn't understand diplomatic language. Thus, he portrays himself as the tough-talking, shoot-from-the-belt, no-nonsense people's man to divert attention from his obeisance to Washington's policies. As Uruguay's tourism industry in Punta del Este continues to reel from the huge downturn in Argentine holidaymakers, it probably occurred to Batlle that nothing is better to distract attention from internal economic downturns than to provoke external scandals. And provoke one he did. The Uruguayan president is finding himself on his second personal apology to Argentina's Duhalde today, with a further apology to the people of Argentina. Everyone is duly shocked and distracted. It's all in the course of a normal day's politics for Jorge Batlle - a master of prevarication and deception - and far from the people's leader he seeks to portray. (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-18695 2002-Jun-05 03:53:28