Kennedy Warns Cuba On Planes Near Ships

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30064, 23 February 1963, Page 11

Kennedy Warns Cuba On Planes Near Ships

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) WASHINGTON, February 22. President Kennedy gave blunt notice to Cuba yesterday to keep its military aircraft away from United States shipping. He told the United States military chiefs to back up his warning with fire-power if necessary. However, at the same time he sought to calm Congressional anger over an attack by Russian-built MiG fighters on an American shrimp boat on Wednesday.

The President refrained, at a press conference yesterday, from pinning any blame on the Soviet Government for the attack, the Associated Press reported.

The small boat and its two negro crew members were not hit as the vessel, the Ala, lay disabled by engine trouble in the Florida Straits. The President declined to link the incident with the Soviet agreement to withdraw “several thousand” of its troops from Cuba. “We are very interested in seeing the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Cuba, and we will be watching progress over the next few weeks.” he said. The President also said that the United States Government did not yet know whether the attack “was a deliberate decision by the Cuban Government or a decision by the pilots involved.” A strong protest had been sent to Havana, the White House said. Later, however, Cuba de-

nied that its aircraft had attacked the shrimp boat. A Cuban Armed Forces Ministry communique, broadcast by Radio Havana, said two Cuban reconnaissance planes trying to locate two fishing boats which allegedly were seized by counterrevolutionaries ’ last week, sighted a boat which looked as if it might have been one of these two vessels. When the aircraft discovered that the boat was not one of those they were looking for, the planes left “without firing any shots or carrying out any acts of hostility against her,” the communique said. The Cuban communique gave a detailed list of alleged incidents involving Cuban fishing boats and what it referred to as armed ships sailed by anti-Communist exiles based in Caribbean countries.

The Cuban Radio said American planes “harry all shipping in Cuban waters and have created a zone of insecurity in this area. Cuba has been forced to take security measures.”

It urged the United States “to take the necessary steps to stop the piratical actions carried out from the United States coast against Cuba.” Kennedy’s Orders

Earlier, Mr Kennedy said he had given orders “to ensure that action will be taken against any vessel or aircrait which executes an attack against a vessel or aircraft of the United States over international waters in the Caribbean.” Such action obviously would include shooting if necessary, A.P. said. However, the President declined at this time to proclaim a policy of “hot pursuit” as advocated by some members of Congress. Under this policy, attacking planes or ships would be pursued right back to their Cuban bases if necessary to destroy them. Details of the United States reaction might well wait, he said, until it was seen whether the attack on the shrimp boat “was a isolated incident, the result of a pilot’s decision, or was the deliberate decision by the Cuban Government which forecasts other attacks.”

While Washington officials described it as a rocket attack, the boat’s crew said on arrival at Key West, Florida, they were convinced the attackers used machineguns, not rockets. “Could See Pilot” They said one Cuban MiG had ignored a truce flag they had waved. “He (the MiG pilot) circled around and came in low a-shootin’—we could even see the pilot,” said the skipper, Paris Jackson.

“We hit the deck and lay there. It really scared me. God, I was really scared. We just lay there because there wasn’t anywhere else to go." he said.

Benjamin Washington, the only other man aboard the Ala. said: “We were scared to go into the pilot house or galley for- fear they might think we had guns or ammunition or something . in there.”

.The fishermen said that the nearest shots were about 200 yards from the boat but they were in no doubt that the jets had been firing at them. The Associated Press said some American quarters considered the MiGs deliberately fired to miss the boat. They could easily have hit the boat if they wished. Four Planes in Area

A Defence Department spokesman said there were four MiG's in the area, but only two fired. American F4B jets from a Marine Corps fighter squadron were dispatched to the scene from Key West, when the MiG's showed up as “unidentified targets” on a radar screen. The incident occurred in international waters 60 nautical miles north of the Cuban mainland and 78 nautical miles east-south-east of Key West. Florida. A.P. reported.

The Swiss Embassy yesterday received and forwarded the United States protest over the incident The Swiss have been looking after United States interests in Cuba since relations between Havana and Washington were broken off in January, 1961.