Cuba Friday slammed US plans to tighten sanctions on the cash-strapped communist country as "cruel and cowardly," with the Communist Party insisting it will stand strong against US President George W. Bush's "putrid ideology."
"His cruel and cowardly measures surely will impose some sacrifices on our people, but they will not stop for a single second its strides toward human and social goals" a Cuban Communist Party statement said.
PHOTO: AFP
The US is determined to push to get "the Cuban example ... wiped off the map," the party statement charged in its official newspaper, Granma.
"All of the craziness of the maniacal and insane Cuba transition program of a fraudulently elected president [Bush] is geared to that end," it said, calling the US plan unveiled Thursday a hodgepodge of "lies, rancor, frustrations and meddling in the domestic affairs of a country" in line with an "imperialist plan to annex Cuba."
"Cuba shall never return to the horrible, savage and inhuman condition of being a colony of the United States," said the party document, one of its harshest against Bush since he took office in 2001.
A US military plane will broadcast pro-democracy messages into Cuba as part of a plan Bush endorsed in Washington to "hasten" Castro's departure.
Washington will also tighten restrictions on Cuban-Americans' cash remittances to relatives on the island and limit family visits between the US and Cuba to one every three years, officials said in Washington.
And US funds will be used to spread information worldwide about Washington's accusations that Havana harbors terrorists; foments subversion in Latin America; and has at least a limited developmental offensive biological weapons research capability, according to the report.
Cuba denies these charges and has urged Bush's administration to substantiate them.
Goals of the US initiative are to undermine Castro's plans that his brother, Raul Castro, succeed him; speed up Cuba's "transition to democracy"; and put in place US programs and policies in anticipation of what Washington sees as the eventual defeat of Cuban communism, US officials said.
This "is a strategy that says we're not waiting for the day of Cuban freedom, we are working for the day of freedom in Cuba," Bush said after meeting with the panel, which he created to recommend a tougher line on Havana, as the November US presidential election looms. Florida, home to some 800,000 Cuban-Americans, is considered likely to be a key state in the election.
The US plan also recommends the spending of up to US$18 million between now and 2006 to deploy "Commando Solo," a specially outfitted C-130 transport plane that has beamed US messages into Afghanistan and Iraq over the past three years.
That money would eventually purchase and refit a dedicated "airborne platform" over international waters for Radio and TV Marti, which Cubans often miss because Havana jams them, the panel's report said.
Cuban dissidents welcomed the plan with skepticism.
Elizardo Sanchez, who heads the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, said the was "very skeptical" and saw "few practical results" in the plan.
Vladimiro Roca, Todos Unidos coordinator, said the plan was "a show of solidarity with the Cuban people and democratization," but he added that there were "questionable" measures in the plan.
On Feb. 24, 1996, the Cuban air force shot down civilian aircraft with the Florida-based Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue, killing all four men on board and sharply raising tensions between the neighboring countries, which do not maintain full diplomatic relations.
Cuba said the planes were in its airspace though a UN body found they were not.
The US has had a comprehensive economic embargo clamped on Cuba, the Americas' only one-party communist state, since 1962.
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