The Miami Herald
October 19, 1999
 
 
Cuba testing birds for germ warfare, exile says

 BY PABLO ALFONSO
 El Nuevo Herald

 A Cuban exile living in Switzerland contends that Cuba has been experimenting
 since 1980 with bacteriological warfare, using birds as carriers.

 In his book Cuban Nature, Carlos Wotzkow writes that the government of
 President Fidel Castro developed ``an idea that aimed at carrying out biological
 warfare against the territory of the United States by delivering infectious diseases
 through mites or other parasites attached to migratory birds.''

 The book, published in Miami in June 1998, tells about experiments allegedly
 conducted at the Zoology Institute in Havana. Wotzkow, who left Cuba in 1992,
 said he worked at the institute and knew about the project. According to him, a
 `` `biological front' was created by direct order of Fidel, under his supervision and
 personal visits.''

 ``The idea was to inject the mites and migratory birds with leptospiral viruses,''
 Wotzkow said last week from Switzerland. Presumably, the viruses would be
 transmitted to humans by mosquitoes that had bitten the birds.

 Luis Roberto Hernandez, a professor of entomology at the University of Puerto
 Rico, said he was on the research team.

 ``I know [the program] because I lived it,'' he said last week from Mayaguez. ``I
 was there when the laboratories were set up in 10 rooms at the Zoology Institute.
 They were intended for the identification and production of the virus, and for the
 use of migratory birds as hosts.''

                     Copyright 1999 Miami Herald