From: Michael Hoover <hoov-AT-freenet.tlh.fl.us>
Subject: M-I: Cuba Alleges U.S. Biological Attack (fwd)
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 97 14:21:05 18000


Forwarded message:
> Date: Mon, 25 Aug 1997 23:38:55 -0400 (EDT)
> From: "Victor O. Story" <story-AT-kutztown.edu>
> To: ATWS <thrdwrld-AT-sphinx.Gsu.EDU>
> Subject: Cuba Alleges U.S. Biological Attack (fwd)
>   	  				 
> 	 GENEVA (Reuter) - Cuba Monday showed a U.N. meeting against  
> biological weapons pictures of an alleged U.S. operation to 
> plague the island with a crop-eating pest and called for an 
> international investigation. 
> 	 This is the first time the Biological Weapons Convention is  
> dealing with a complaint under a 1991 provision which lets a 
> nation that believes it has come under biological attack seek a 
> meeting to investigate. 
> 	 Washington dismissed the charge, but still had to explain to
> countries committed to banning biological weapons just why a 
> mystery plane was emitting smoke on a low flight path over a 
> remote corner of Cuba. 
> 	 Cuba says a U.S. government crop-dusting plane for  
> anti-narcotics operations sprayed a substance over Cuban potato 
> fields last October that led to the appearance of a crop-eating 
> insect. 
> 	 ``We want an investigation on what happened,'' deputy  
> foreign minister Maria de los Angeles Flores told reporters 
> outside the session of signatories of the 1972 Biological 
> Weapons Convention. 
> 	 ``It's important we can discuss our demand in this forum.''  
> 	 The session adjourned until Wednesday after delegates asked  
> for time to study the nine-page U.S. presentation of its own 
> evidence including technical details of the plane and scientific 
> data on ``thrips palmi'' and its migration routes. 
> 	 In the latest twist in the long history of hostility between
> Havana and Washington, which have no diplomatic ties, Cuba 
> showed the session alleged evidence of the pest attack, 
> including photographs, maps and laboratory reports on the bug. 
> 	 ``It was something out of a former era,'' said one diplomat,
> recalling the days in the 1960s when the Central Intelligence 
> Agency waged a covert campaign against Cuba that included a deal 
> with the Mafia to assassinate President Fidel Castro. 
> 	 Washington, which Cuba sees as bent on stripping it of its  
> independence, has maintained an economic embargo on Cuba for 35 
> years and is the most aggressive advocate of political change 
> there. 
> 	 Flores said the first signs of the ``thrips palmi'' pest  
> appeared in plantations on the Lenin state horticultural farm in 
> western Matanzas province in December last year. 
> 	 A single-engine civilian S2R crop-dusting plane operated by  
> the U.S. State Department was sighted over the province Oct. 21, 
> she said in her presentation. 
> 	 The State Department acknowledges such a plane flew over  
> western Cuba during a flight from Florida to the Cayman Islands 
> in October, but says it emitted smoke to identify its position 
> to a Cuban commercial airliner. 
> 	 Cuba countered that smoke emissions are not used in standard
> aviation practice and asked Washington why its aircraft did not 
> seek guidance from air traffic control instead. It said the crew 
> of the Cuban plane said they saw a liquid, not smoke, being 
> emitted. 
> 	 Washington hit back with its nine-page presentation with  
> details on the plane as well as scientific data on thrips palmi. 
> 	 ``All of this will demonstrate that the Cuban allegation  
> that the United States acted deliberately to infest Cuba with an 
> insect pest is false,'' U.S. delegation head Donald Mahley said 
> in his presentation. 
> 	 The convention has no mechanism for verification, and  
> experts doubt an in-depth investigation can be carried out 
> because they say the pest in question can easily be carried 
> around by winds. 
-- 





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