HAVANA (AFP) - Cuba did not blink after Mexico and Peru pulled their ambassadors and President Fidel Castro (news - web sites) risked further isolation from Latin Americans who dare condemn the communist island's human rights record.

The Cuban foreign ministry rejected in a statement "this new action against Cuba and announces that these declarations inspired by arrogance, high-handedness, crassness and lies will in time be met with a response."

Both Mexico and Peru recalled their ambassadors Sunday in reaction to Castro's May Day speech Saturday condemning both countries for having voted for an April 15 resolution condemning Cuba before the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

Cuba has been increasingly isolated from Latin America and Europe since the arrests of 75 dissidents who were summarily tried and given harsh sentences a year ago. Mexico and Peru left Cuba further isolated as it contends with US pressure on countries in the region to limit trade and diplomatic ties with Havana.

Mexico, a traditional Cuban ally despite US protests, also ordered Cuba's envoy to Mexico City, Jorge Bolanos, to leave the country, saying Cuban diplomats had been involved in political activities incompatible with their duties.

Tensions had been heating up since Wednesday, when Cuba deported a Mexican businessman of Argentine origin, Carlos Ahumada, wanted in Mexico on corruption charges. Cuba contended that Ahumada's activity was of a strictly political nature, an assertion Ahumada himself denied.

Within hours of Mexico's decision Sunday, Peru attacked Cuban interference in its domestic affairs and withdrew its ambassador without breaking relations.

Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez postponed a planned trip to Washington Monday to manage the controversy and meet with US Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites), his deputy, Geronimo Gutierrez, said.

"Mexico and Peru have responded, in my judgment, properly," Powell said of their actions.

Cuban President Fidel Castro usually offers an inviting target during U.S. presidential election campaigns. President Bush, accused by some in his party of not doing enough to confront Castro, offered them on Thursday what amounts to a policy of regime change in Cuba.
"We're not waiting for the day of Cuban freedom, we are working for the day of freedom in Cuba," Bush told reporters.

A presidential commission recommended that the United States subvert the planned succession in Cuba under which power would pass from Castro to his younger brother, Raul.

Although Bush did not address that issue directly, an aide said the president generally accepted the commission's proposals.

Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry said Bush was playing election-year politics.

"Four years after candidate Bush came to Florida and promised Cuban-Americans the moon, all they've gotten from this president is lip service and broken promises," Kerry said in a statement.

Kerry pledged that, as president, he would fight full time for freedom and democracy on the island.

Bush has taken some steps to demonstrate his deep disregard for the Cuban leader, who turns 78 in August. But his comments Thursday seemed to add a new dimension to his belligerence.

Cuban-American Republican members of Congress said they were pleased. Five senators, including two Republicans, were not.

"Opening America's doors to Cuba - and challenging Cuba to open its doors to the rest of the world - will be an act of strength and magnanimity," they said in a letter to Bush.

Mexican President Vicente Fox, whom Bush counts as a major hemispheric ally, said in Mexico City that his government considered the proposal an infringement of Cuba's sovereignty.

"Mexico will not back in any way this proposal, which runs counter to Cuba's sovereignty, nor will we accept the interference of any other country there," Fox said.

Cuba and Mexico are themselves involved in a diplomatic spat. Mexico expelled Cuba's ambassador and called its ambassador home from Havana after accusing the Cubans of meddling in Mexico's internal affairs.

The commission, headed by Secretary of State Colin Powell, said the United States "rejects the continuation of a communist dictatorship" on the island.

The commission recommended measures in its report "to focus pressure and attention on the ruling elite so that a succession by this elite or any one of its individuals is seen as what it would be: an impediment to a democratic and free Cuba."

HAVANA, Cuba (AP) -- Stores that use the U.S. currency were closed across Havana Tuesday morning after Cuban officials, blaming new U.S. measures meant to undermine President Fidel Castro's government, suddenly halted most of sales in dollars in Cuba.

Many of the shuttered stores displayed identical "closed for inventory" notices.

Scores of agitated people had lined up for last-minute purchases at late-night variety stores after the government announced on state television Monday night that most sales in dollars are "suspended until further notice."

The measure could have dramatic effect on everyday life in Cuba. Local people have come to count on the hard-currency stores that offer plentiful goods -- from soap to spark plugs -- that are available in scant quantities, if at all, at highly subsidized prices in Cuban pesos.

The official announcement Monday said food, gasoline and personal hygiene products would be exempted from the halt in dollar sales.

But it also warned that dollar prices would be raised on food and gasoline -- and perhaps other products if the stores reopen.

Prices in pesos, the government said, would remain stable.

It was not clear if they would resume at some point. The announcement warned Cubans that "days of work and sacrifice await" and said further measures could follow if the new steps are insufficient.

Cuba blamed the measure on "the brutal and cruel" measures adopted last week by U.S. President George W. Bush to strengthen the embargo of Cuba and to hasten the end of the communist government here.

The announcement said the U.S. proposals "are directly aimed at strangling our development and reducing to a minimum the resources in hard currency that are essential for the necessities of food, medical and educational services and other essentials."

Many analysts had seen the Bush measures as a relatively modest tweak to the broad U.S. economic embargo that has been in place against Cuba since the early 1960s.

Bush said Cuban-Americans now can visit relatives on the island once every three years rather than once a year. They can spend $50 a day rather than the earlier limit of $164.

Visits and money transfers are limited to immediate family members -- excluding uncles and cousins -- and officials and Communist Party members cannot receive funds. More money would be allotted for dissidents.

A permanent closure of the dollar stores could be another step back from the liberal reforms enacted in the early 1990s to cope with the loss of aid and trade Cuba had enjoyed with the Soviet Union.

Possession of dollars was legalized in 1993 to draw dollars from growing tourism and family remittances into the state stores. The government has steadily offered more and more goods in the U.S. currency while the Cuban ration book of items available in pesos has withered.

For many Cubans, rations now cover eight eggs, a pound of chicken, a half-liter of cooking oil, six pounds of rice a half-pound of a ground meat-soy mixture and a few other goods each month.

The rest must be purchased at far higher prices either in pesos or in dollars.

Many of those lined up Monday night at shops built into gas stations were buying cooking oil and soap before prices rise. Most expressed frustration at the measures. Some said they blamed Bush. Nearly all declined to give their names and a few physically threatened foreign camera crews.

The announcement did not make clear whether dollar-only shops in hotels and other tourist areas crucial to Cuba's economy would also be closed. Many until now have catered to Cubans as well as to foreigners.

The government assured Cubans that other aspects of the economy would not be affected: they can still change money, buy food in pesos at private farmers markets, enjoy free rent and use the socialist health, education, cultural and sports services.

It was not immediately clear what would happen to the goods now sold at dollar stores.

The dollar-only shops have been associated with social inequalities that have worried Cuban leaders. An elite of people with access to greenbacks can easily buy everyday goods that a doctor cannot on a salary equivalent to US$25 a month.

Key West, FL, Jun. 11 (UPI) -- Two Key West, Fla., residents were arrested and charged with violating the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba for organizing sailboat races to Cuba.

Peter Goldsmith and Michele Geslin could face up to 15 years in prison, The Miami Herald reported Friday.

They are accused of acting as "travel service providers" without a license granted by the U.S. Department of Treasury, which regulates the Cuban embargo.

Goldsmith organized and operated a series of five races between Key West and Cuba from 1997 to 2003.

The case is the first time pleasure boaters have been charged with violating the 42-year-old embargo.

Travel agencies have been prosecuted twice, once in 1988 for bass fishing trips and in 1996 against a southwest Florida travel company.

U.S. Attorney Marcos Daniel Jimenez said the indictment is proof the embargo has teeth. Attorneys for Goldsmith and Geslin called it outrageous and politically motivated in an election year.

Self-Mutilation
Back to Cuba.



In the general political commotion centering on John Edwards, the Fourth of July, and Fallujah, attention strays from matters Cuban, except when a cigar is being probed. Well, what's been going on is one of those Fidel Castro extravaganzas in Havana in which he vows eternal hostility to anything that threatens his dictatorship or loosens the shackles of the dystopia he has presided over longer than Hitler and Stalin combined.

One important irritant is the ruling done by the Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). It has ordained that Cuban-Americans may not visit their families in Cuba more often than once every three years, that they may not spend more than $50 per day, that they may not stay in Cuba for more than two weeks (this is Uncle Sam talking, not Fidel Castro), and that contributions to Cuban family members must be limited to $1,200 per household per year.

Nobody who keeps political tallies will deny that these initiatives are politically based. This conclusion derives from a general knowledge of the impotence of boycotts, and a particular knowledge of Castro's indomitability. So the pinpricks are not going to derail Castro — will they deliver Florida to Bush? That of course is the idea. If it's anti-Castro, the Cuban-American community is for it, right?

But not all Cuban-Americans will cheer. For one thing, the law is designed to prevent them from doing what some of them would otherwise do. Regulations of the kind promulgated by OFAC have no effect on people who do not plan to visit in Cuba or to send money for Cuban relief. It can be held that the measures affect everyone concerned with a free Cuba — if it could be established in which way they would tilt the Castro scene. If they weakened him, the world would benefit. If they strengthened him, then we would have bad politics bringing on bad days.

Some Cuban-Americans, who no longer have family ties to Cuba (Castro took power 45 years ago), have expressed resentment of those who feel free to travel to Havana. There are Cuban-Americans who believe that any traffic of any kind with Castro weakens the solidarity of U.S. policy.

But such policies haven't brought on reforms. No reform in Cuba is going to be effective except as it brings on the death or retirement of Castro. He is a monument of socialist dogma. In the early 1960s he chided Khrushchev for exhibiting less ideological rectitude than Mao Tse-tung. There isn't anything this side of a volcanic eruption while he is nesting in the volcano's crater that is going to get him to loosen up. The papal visit in 1998, to which so much hope was attached, had no permanent effect. Even the American Library Association simply gave up on a movement to gain liberty for jailed Cuban librarians.

There is a very high cost to Castro's obduracy. But the cost being paid is by Cubans. Over here, it is odd that a government that recognizes the government of Vietnam, and is ready and willing to send aid to Sudan and the Congo, should engage, for spite and politics, in denying to Cuban-Americans the right to gratify their own impulses.

There is resistance to this initiative of OFAC. Congressman Jeff Flake of Arizona has for three years sponsored an amendment (the Flake Amendment) which seeks to forbid the use of federal funds to enforce the United States' anti-travel regulations. He recently succeeded in getting the Senate's endorsement of it. But that is still this side of the horsepower required to write the provisions into law. His own view is that the new OFAC regulations will net damage Republican political interests in November.

The final irony is that Fidel Castro is being permitted, by Americans, to impinge on the freedom of Americans. That, at least, should please Castro, and he can ride about the country proclaiming his success in imposing on the lives of yet more Cubans, who hoped to be living in the land of the free.

WASHINGTON - Like many scholars, Charles Trumbull hoped that one day his work would attract attention in high places. So he might have been thrilled when the White House used one of his papers to draft a speech for President Bush last week.

But he's not.

In a hotel conference room in Tampa on Friday, Bush told law enforcement officials that Cuban President Fidel Castro was brazenly promoting sex tourism.

''The dictator welcomes sex tourism. Here's how he bragged about the industry,'' Bush said. 'This is his quote: `Cuba has the cleanest and most educated prostitutes in the world.' ''

Asked about the source for the quote, White House officials later provided a Web link to a 2001 paper written by Trumbull. At the time he wrote the paper, Trumbull was a Dartmouth College undergraduate. Trumbull is now 24 and a law student at Vanderbilt University.

Trumbull acknowledges that the quote, which he did not footnote in the paper, was likely a paraphrase of Castro's comments in 1992, which have been oft-repeated in the past 12 years and seem to have taken on a life of their own.

MISCONSTRUED

But regardless of the exact wording, Trumbull says the president's speech misconstrued the meaning of Castro's words.

''It shows that they didn't read much of the article,'' Trumbull said in a telephone interview.

According to Trumbull, who conducted field research in Cuba, prostitution boomed there after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But beginning around 1996, Cuban authorities began to crack down on the practice. Although it still exists, Trumbull said, it is far less visible.

And Castro was not boasting about Cuba's prostitutes as sex workers when he made the remarks.

'Castro was merely trying to emphasize some of the successes of the revolution by saying, `Even our prostitutes are educated,' '' Trumbull said. ``Castro was trying to defend his revolution against negative publicity. He was in no way bragging about the opportunities for sex tourism on the island.''

On Monday, administration officials acknowledged that they did not have a source for the wording of the president's citation other than Trumbull's paper. A White House spokeswoman defended the inclusion, arguing that it expressed an essential truth about Cuba.

`MORALLY CORRUPT'

''The president's point in citing Castro's quote was to highlight Castro's morally corrupt attitude to human trafficking,'' spokeswoman Claire Buchan said. She pointed to two other instances in which Castro boasted of the education level of Cuba's prostitutes; in neither case was the context a direct promotion of sex tourism.

The speech ''was vetted the same way all the president's speeches are vetted,'' Buchan said, while declining to explain. A State Department official familiar with the matter said the White House contacted the department no more than a day before the speech and asked for material on human trafficking in Cuba. A quick search of the Internet turned up Trumbull's paper; the official said there was inadequate time to find the original source for Castro's quote.

1992 SPEECH

According to a translation by the British Broadcasting Corp., Castro told Cuba's National Assembly in July 1992 the following:

``There are hookers, but prostitution is not allowed in our country . . . There are no women forced to sell themselves to a man, to a foreigner, to a tourist. Those who do so do it on their own, voluntarily . . . We can say that they are highly educated hookers and quite healthy, because we are the country with the lowest number of AIDS cases.''

Trumbull described himself as ''annoyed'' by the use the White House made of his undergraduate research project.

''It is really disheartening to see bits of my research contorted, taken out of context, and used to support conclusions that are contrary to the truth,'' Trumbull said.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has announced the creation of a new post to help "accelerate the demise" of the Castro regime in Cuba.
Caleb McCarry, a veteran Republican Party activist, was appointed as the Cuba transition co-ordinator.

Ms Rice said for 50 years Fidel Castro had condemned Cubans to a "tragic fate of repression and poverty".

Mr Castro accuses the US of funding unrest and vowed that dissidents would never bring down his government.

'Castro's tyranny'

The post was recommended in a 2004 report on Cuba by a commission headed by Ms Rice's predecessor Colin Powell.

The report outlines the steps the US is prepared to take to bring about regime change in Cuba, such as subverting Mr Castro's plans to hand over power to his younger brother.

Introducing Mr McCarry at the State Department in Washington, Ms Rice said the US was working with advocates of democratic change on the island.

"We are working to deny resources to the Castro regime to break its blockade on information and to broadcast the truth about its deplorable treatment of the Cuban people," she said.

She said the aim of the effort was to "accelerate the demise of Castro's tyranny" on the Caribbean island, which he has ruled since 1959.

Earlier this week, in a speech marking the anniversary of the Cuban revolution, Mr Castro accused the US of financing dissidents and false propaganda.

"No other revolutionary process has been able to count on as much consensus and overwhelming support as the Cuban revolution has," he told supporters in Havana.

It was said in the '50's that the way to win the cold war with Russia was to send squadrons of B-52s and drop nylon stockings on the Soviet Union.

We actually won the cold war in a different way. But with Eastern Europe, we won it with openness, the Helsinki process.

So it's arguable which is the most effective. We have had 50 years of an embargo on Cuba, but the grip of the Castros and the army and the party is so strong that it hasn't worked. So I'm agnostic on this.

If Obama wants to try openness, that's good. What he has done now is not a total openness, like Helsinki, but what he has done is to make a gesture, which is to allow some increased commerce and travel, and what he's waiting, appropriately, for is a response, which would mean seeing that the Cubans release some political prisoners.

If he gets a response, I think he ought to make a further gesture, and if, ultimately, it ends up with openness, that's a tact we ought to try. I don't think any of us should have an ideological commitment to a tactic. Whatever works in liberating Cuba, I think we ought to try.