Cuba hopes for amiable U.S.

Press, 2 January 1985, Page 6

Cuba hopes for amiable U.S.

By

LIONEL MARTIN,

of

Reuter (through NZPA) Havana Twenty-six years ago the Cuban dictator, Fulgencio Batista, left a New Year’s Eve party and fled from Cuba, marking victory for a Cuban revolution led by 33-year-old Fidel Castro. Within two years the Cuban revolutionary Government under Dr Castro had made radical reforms which, though not then publicly labelled as socialist, nationalised foreign and Cuban-owned real estate, factories, and big land-hold-ings including sugar plantations. More than half a million Cubans, mainly from the upper and middle classes, fled Cuba in the first years of revolutionary rule. Of 6000 physicians in Cuba in 1958 only half remained by 1961. The United States Government, which had recognised Dr Castro’s Administration, bolstered its opposition with each new radical reform on the Caribbean island only 144 km from United States shores. ■ Under the then President, Dwight Eisenhower, Cuba

lost the right to sell its main export product, crude sugar, to United States firms. By 1961 the United States had broken diplomatic and trade ties with Cuba.

Attempts to overthrow the Cuban Government by the American Central Intelligence Agency in the early years of the revolution failed. The most ambitious attempt, the Bay of Pigs invasion, which was conceived under Mr Eisenhower and implemented under his successor, John Kennedy, was defeated in 72 hours by Dr Castro’s rag-tag revolutionary soldiers. It was then that Dr Castro declared for the first time that Cuba was making a socialist revolution.

The Central Intelligence Agency, according to a Senate Intelligence subcommittee report, also devised numerous but unsuccessful schemes to kill Fidel Castro. In one case it planned to sprinkle powder on his boots that would make his beard fall out, thus depriving him of his heroic image.

Notwithstanding the animosity of seven successive

United States Presidents, Cuba’s ties with Communist nations and especially the Soviet Union, have become more intimate with each year. The Soviet Union provides all the weapons for Cuba’s Armed Forces free of charge, sells it petroleum at half the world price, and buys more than half its crude sugar for 10 times the world price. More than 85 per cent of Cuba’s trade is with the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc.

In spite of a shortage of many consumer goods, Cuba boasts that the daily per-

capita nutritional intake of the population is 3000 calories and almost 80 grams of protein. Basic food products are guaranteed to all Cubans through a rationing system with Government-subsidised prices that have been in force since 1961. According to the Planning Minister, Mr Humberto Perez, Cuba’s economic growth rate over the last five years averages 8 per cent annually. Cuban strides in public education and health care for its population have been recognised internationally. Cuba has 14,000 more doctors than it had in 1958. Dr Castro has said that Cuba is on its way to becoming a Third World medical Power. Havana’s revolutionary internationalism has been a stumbling-block in the way of improved relations with the United States. In the 1960 s Cuba supported revolutionary movements throughout Latin America. In the late 1970 s it sent troops to Ethiopia and Angola to help defend and consolidate revolutionary governments.

Cuba has also been accused by the Reagan Administration of sending arms to Left-wing guerrillas in El Salvador and a lot of military aid to Marxistruled Nicaragua. These allegations have been denied by Dr Castro. In the middle of last month the United States and Cuba signed an immigration agreement that Dr Castro called “a positive and 'constructive event.” Under the agreement Cuba will accept the return of 2746 undesirable Cuban exiles now in United States prisons. The United States will establish a 20,000 person-a-year quota for Cubans who wish to emigrate to the United States. Dr Castro said repeatedly last year that he favoured dialogue with the United States that would lead to a lessening of tensions and a normalisation of relations. He said recently that Cuba would take a wait-and-see attitude to determine whether the Reagan Administration in its second term would abandon its policy of confrontation with Cuba and seek an improvement in relations.