Wayzata World Factbook 1996/The World Factbook - 1996 Edition - Wayzata Technology (3079) (1996).iso/mac/TEXT/backgrd/CUBA.BKH

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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
BACKGROUND NOTES:  CUBA (CONTINUED)
PUBLISHED BY THE BUREAU OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS
NOVEMBER 1994


Official Name:  Republic of Cuba

FOREIGN RELATIONS

Cuba's once-ambitious foreign policy has been scaled back and redirected
as a result of economic hardship and the end of the East-West conflict.

Cuba aims to find new sources of trade, aid, and foreign investment, and
to promote opposition to U.S. policy toward Cuba, especially the trade
embargo and the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act.  Cuba has relations with
nearly 140 countries and has civilian assistance workers--principally
medical--in more than 20 nations.

Cuba has largely abandoned its support for revolutionary movements.
When it first came to power, the Castro Government supported the spread
of revolution by aiming to reproduce throughout Latin America its rural-
based guerrilla warfare experience.  In 1959, Cuba aided armed
expeditions against Panama, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti.  During
the 1960s, Guatemala, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, and Bolivia all faced
serious Cuban-backed attempts to develop guerrilla insurgencies.  These
movements failed to attract popular support.  The most conspicuous
failure occurred in 1967.  Castro had sent Che Guevara--a charismatic
revolutionary hero from Argentina and symbol of Cuban efforts to spread
the revolution throughout Latin America--to lead an insurgency in
Bolivia.  Guevara's efforts were opposed by both the peasantry and the
Bolivian Communist Party.  Guevara was killed, and the insurgency
collapsed.

Cuba's support for Latin revolutionaries, along with the openly Marxist-
Leninist character of its government and its alignment with the
U.S.S.R., contributed to its isolation in the hemisphere.  In January
1962, the Organization of American States (OAS) excluded Cuba from
active participation.  Two years later, OAS foreign ministers resolved
that member nations should have no diplomatic and consular relations
with Cuba and should suspend all trade and sea transportation.

In the late 1960s, Cuba de-emphasized its policy of supporting
revolutions abroad and began to pursue normal government-to-government
relations with other Latin American nations.  Covert assistance to some
guerrilla groups continued, however, well into the 1980s.  By the mid-
1970s, Cuba had re-established diplomatic relations with a number of
countries in the region.  In 1975, the OAS lifted comprehensive
sanctions and deferred to individual member states the option of
diplomatic and trade relations with Cuba.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Cuba expanded its military presence
abroad--deployments reached 50,000 troops in Angola, 24,000 in Ethiopia,
1,500 in Nicaragua, and hundreds more elsewhere.  In Angola, Cuban
troops, supported logistically by the U.S.S.R., backed the Popular
Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), one of the movements
competing for power after Portugal granted Angola its independence.

Cuban forces played a key role in Ethiopia's war in the Ogaden region
against Somalia, 1977-78, and remained there in substantial numbers as a
garrison force for a decade.  Cubans served in a non-combat advisory
role in Mozambique and the Congo.  Cuba also used the Congo as a
logistical support center for Cuba's Angola mission.

In the late 1980s, Cuba began to pull back militarily.  Cuba
unilaterally removed its forces from Ethiopia; met the timetable of the
1988 Angola-Namibia accords by completing the withdrawal of its forces
from Angola before July 1991; and ended military assistance to Nicaragua
following the Sandinistas' 1990 electoral defeat.  In January 1992,
following the peace agreement in El Salvador, Castro stated that Cuban
support for insurgents was a thing of the past.


U.S.-CUBAN RELATIONS

After Castro came to power, bilateral relations deteriorated sharply,
primarily because of the new regime's imposition of a repressive
dictatorship, its uncompensated nationalization of American property
valued at about $1.8 billion in 1962, and its support for violent
subversive groups.  The United States broke diplomatic relations on
January 3, 1961, after the Cuban Government demanded that the U.S.
embassy in Havana be reduced to a skeleton staff.  In 1962, the United
States imposed a comprehensive economic embargo against Cuba.  Tensions
between the two governments peaked during the abortive "Bay of Pigs"
invasion by anti-Castro Cubans supported by the United States in April
1961 and the October 1962 missile crisis.

Following Cuba's de-emphasis of the export of revolution in the 1970s,
the United States did not oppose the OAS decision to make discretionary
the application of sanctions against Cuba and began to discuss
normalization of relations with Cuba.  Talks began but were halted when
Cuba launched a large-scale intervention in Angola.  Subsequent efforts
undertaken to improve relations led to the establishment of interests
sections in the two capitals on September 1, 1977.  Currently, the U.S.
interests section in Havana and the Cuban interests section in
Washington, DC, are under the protection of the Swiss embassy.

New differences in the late 1970s and early 1980s--Cuba's failure to
withdraw troops from Angola, intervention in Ethiopia, increasing
subversion in the Caribbean Basin and Central America, the delivery of
sophisticated Soviet weaponry, and the Cuban Government's deliberate
efforts to violate U.S. sovereignty and immigration laws through a mass
exodus of Cubans in 1980 known as the "Mariel boatlift"--eroded the
possibility of improvement in bilateral relations.

Quiet efforts to explore the prospects for improving relations were
initiated by the United States in 1981-82; however, the Cuban Government
refused to alter its conduct with regard to U.S. concerns about Cuba's
support for violent political change and its close political and
military cooperation with the Soviet Union.  The liberation of Grenada
by the United States and regional allies in 1983 and the expulsion of
Cuban forces based there was a setback for Cuba's plans to expand its
regional sphere of influence.

In 1984, the United States and Cuba negotiated an agreement to normalize
immigration and return to Cuba the "excludables" (criminals or insane
persons who, under U.S. law, are not allowed to reside in the United
States) who had arrived during the 1980 Mariel boatlift.  Cuba suspended
this agreement in May 1985 following the U.S. initiation of the Radio
Marti by the Voice of America (VOA), which broadcasts news to Cuba.  The
1984 agreement, reinstated in November 1987, allowed normal migration to
occur between the two countries.  In March 1990, VOA began transmitting
TV Marti to Cuba.  Since its inception, Cuba has jammed TV Marti and
blocked Radio Marti on the AM band.  Radio Marti on short wave has a
large audience.

With the peace settlement in El Salvador and establishment of democracy
in Nicaragua, U.S. concerns focused on Cuban resistance to democratic
reforms and its denial of human rights--two major obstacles to improved
bilateral relations.  In May 1991, President Bush said that if Cuba held
free and fair elections under international supervision, respected human
rights, and stopped subverting its neighbors, U.S.-Cuban relations could
improve significantly.  In October 1992, the Cuban Democracy Act set
forth U.S. policy toward a free and democratic Cuba.  President Clinton
has repeatedly expressed his support for the Cuban Democracy Act.

Its principal provisions ban most U.S. subsidiary trade with Cuba and
exclude any vessel which stops in Cuba from entering U.S. ports for 180
days.  It also provides for humanitarian donations to non-governmental
organizations in Cuba; since its passage, more than $50 million worth of
humanitarian goods have been licensed for export to Cuba.  Improved
telecommunications are also called for.  In October, the U.S. Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) approved applications of five U.S.
carriers to provide direct telecommunications service between the U.S.
and Cuba.  A sixth company with previously issued FCC licenses also
concluded an operating agreement with the Cuban Government and plans to
resume service.

Despite existing tensions, the United States continues to discuss areas
of mutual concern, such as immigration, with the Government of Cuba.
The two governments concluded a migration agreement on September 9 that
reflected their mutual interest in normalizing migration procedures and
included measures to ensure that migration between the two countries is
safe, legal, and orderly.

Interests Sections
Havana:  U.S. Interests Section, Calzada between L and M, Vedado (tel.
33-3551 through 33-3559).

Principal Officer--Joseph G. Sullivan
Deputy Principal Officer--Vincent Mayer
Consul--Sandra Salmon
Public Affairs Adviser--Gene Bigler

Washington, DC:  Cuban Interests Section, 2630 16th Street, NW,
Washington, DC  20009  (tel.  [phone]).

Principal Officer--Alfonso Fraga Perez
Deputy Principal Officer--Miguel Nunez.

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