The State (Columbia, S.C.)
Mon, Feb. 23, 2004
 
No Plans for U.S.-Cuba Migration Talks

ANITA SNOW
Associated Press

HAVANA - America's top diplomat in Cuba said on Monday there were no plans to restart formal U.S.-Cuba migration talks that the United States suspended last month.

The meetings, held every six months, were established to monitor 1994 and 1995 accords designed to promote legal, orderly migration between the two countries - and prevent a mass exodus as in 1994 when tens of thousands of Cubans took to the sea in flimsy vessels for Florida.

The United States said it suspended the migration talks because of Cuba's repeated refusal to discuss key issues, while Cuba blamed the suspension on U.S. presidential election politics.

"The talks potentially could be useful," James Cason, chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba, told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview. "But I think we have found in recent years that they haven't been."

The negotiations were the highest level contact between the two countries that haven't had diplomatic relations for more than 40 years. Their suspension indicated U.S.-Cuba relations were worsening.

Cason said the suspension of the talks does not mean there is no channel of communications with the Cubans. "I meet with my counterpart here in the Foreign Ministry every week and we discuss migration issues," he said.

Under the migration agreements, the United States must provide at least 20,000 permanent immigration visas to Cubans annually and Cuba is to discourage its citizens from making risky attempts by sea and air to immigrate illegally to the United States.

Cason said Cuban authorities are still refusing to discuss allowing American diplomats to visit repatriated migrants in the countryside and are denying exit permits to hundreds of doctors and health care workers who have U.S. government approval to immigrate.

He said three other issues Havana refuses to discuss are:

_Cuba's cooperation in holding a new registration for the lottery from which two-thirds of all legal migrants are chosen.

_A deeper port in Cuba for repatriations, allowing the U.S. Coast Guard to use its larger vessels to return migrants and free up smaller ones for patrols.

_Cuba's obligation under international law to accept the return of Cuban nationals the United States wants to deport.

Cuba's Foreign Ministry insisted in January "it has been and remains willing to seriously debate" all issues mentioned by the Americans.

Cason also told AP the United States still provides moral support to island dissidents nearly a year after a crackdown jailed 75 of them on charges of working with U.S. diplomats to undermine the socialist system.

He denied Cuban charges the mission had provided direct financial support to dissidents, insisting: "We have never given a penny."

Cuba's charges evidently spring from government funding to the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has paid $20 million to U.S.-based groups working to end communist rule on the island.

The groups run Web sites, distribute pro-democracy books and pamphlets, and even provide food and medicine to political prisoners' families, but very little of the cash reaches the island.

Cason also responded to Cuban complaints that Washington has failed to give two Cuban women visas allowing them to visit their husbands - who are serving prison sentences on espionage conspiracy charges.

While saying he didn't know why the visas were rejected, Cason read from declassified public records indicating both women were trained to assist their husbands in intelligence gathering.

Cuba has accused the U.S. government of violating international law by denying visas to Olga Salanueva and Adriana Perez.

Their husbands were among five men a Miami jury convicted in 2001 of trying to infiltrate U.S. military bases and exile groups in Florida. They received federal prison sentences ranging from 15 years to life.