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