in its world-famous medical research laboratories!
When former President Jimmy Carter was preparing to go to Cuba several years ago (and where he addressed the entire country live by radio and tv) he went to the White House first to discuss the trip with the
Bush people, and he asked them, since they had been claiming Cuba just might be a terrorist nation if they had dual-use biological material, IF Bush considered them a threat, and did they have this kind of weapon. He was told, "NO."
The very night before Jimmy Carter was scheduled to go to Havana,
George W. Bush sent John Bolton to give a speech at the Heritage Foundation, where he announced to the world that Cuba was making dual-use biological weapons! This put a hideous cast over former President Jimmy Carter's arrival.
When he got to Cuba he immediately took up the subject with them, was taken to their laboratories, was shown all OVER the place, and he was invited to bring any and all experts of his choice who were familiar with the science involved to come to Cuba and inspect the whole operation, any time of his choice. Forever. Standing invitation.
Of course, not willing to give up a perfectly great charge,
Bush's people continued to claim Cuba was a dangerous terroristic threat. This charge alternated with claiming Cuba is a human trafficking mecca, and Cuba is also a place where childen are turned out as prostitutes, and Cuba is a hotbed of Basque terrorists, and Cuba is a enabler, and friend of the FARC. ETC., ETC., ETC. They probably also accused Cuba of being pro-Islamic. Of course they've always wanted to tell people Cuba persecutes religion, regardless of the facts. There are other charges they throw at Cuba, also, but I can't quickly remember them all!
Found an article which addresses this visit!
Carter questions timing of U.S. accusations against Cuba
May 14, 2002 Posted: 2:04 PM EDT (1804 GMT)
HAVANA, Cuba (CNN) -- Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has urged anyone alleging that Cuba may be trying to develop biological weapons and share that technology with other nations, to visit Cuba for a firsthand probe.
Carter -- on a historic trip to Cuba -- didn't specifically mention any accusers. But the Bush administration has alleged that the island nation is trying to develop biological weapons and is sharing that expertise to countries hostile to the United States.
White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer on Tuesday reiterated the administration's "concerns" over the sharing of technology with countries hostile to the United States. (Full story)
Carter, who is scheduled to visit an AIDS center and a farm cooperative Tuesday, plans to make a speech Tuesday night that will be broadcast throughout Cuba.
In comments Monday, Carter said there were no allegations made or questions raised about possible terrorist activities by Cuba when he was briefed before the trip by officials from the State Department, intelligence agencies and the White House.
"I asked them specifically on more than one occasion: 'Is there any evidence that Cuba has been involved in sharing any information with any other country on Earth that could be used for terrorist purposes?'
"And the answer from our experts on intelligence was 'no,'" Carter said.
More:
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/americas/05/14/carter.visit/index.html
Salon:
~snip~
For Castro, the world's foremost media strategist now toiling with his tenth U.S. administration, Carter's visit has been yet another successful coup fought on the age-old battlefield of newsprint. On the heels of being added to the Axis of Evil by his enemies in Washington, who accused him supporting bio-terrorism -- a move timed to interfere with Carter's visit -- Castro got the respected former president to go to bat for him. In a courageous speech Carter challenged the United States to produce evidence of Cuban terrorism and insisted there was none. Of course, Castro also let Carter take to the Cuban airways and talk about democracy and human rights, knowing the openness would play well internationally and not change much domestically. Through it all, Castro had his eye on the prize: Carter's trip is the latest salvo in a battle to bring back American tourists, and while the battle hasn't yet been won, the P.R. value of the visit is enormous.
In March 1977, at a time when Cuba was enduring a stretch of poverty very similar to today's, one of Carter's first acts was to lift the controversial travel ban on Americans. With the entire economy hingeing on Soviet subsidies, the Cuban people's faith in Castro's abilities as an economist had begun to wane before then. The only way out of the mess was to take a stab at tourism as a means to earn the island some hard currency. So the Varadero peninsula, two hours east of Havana, was earmarked in 1976 as Cuba's first acre of paradise, quarantined specifically for capitalist tourism.
Only 2,500 tourists visited Varadero in 1977. The next year, after Carter lifted the travel ban, the number rocketed to 18,000 -- mostly American tourists who came to indulge on the sweetest ribbon of Cuban sand. It was so profitable that the government began banking heavily on tourism as the next big thing, hoping to turn the island into the Caribbean's new Hawaii.
~snip~
Enter Jimmy Carter. Castro has been making concessions to the United States since January 1999, when President Clinton began negotiations. He's courted the U.S. agricultural sector, which has pushed to open trade with this potential $6 billion food market. He's even reached out to President Bush, expressing sympathy after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and not interfering in any way with the U.S. development of the Guantanamo Bay base to house and interrogate al-Qaida prisoners. But he was getting nowhere with a Republican administration beholden to Cuban-exile voters and right-wing ideologues. So in late 2001, Castro made two moves: He purchased $30 million of corn from Louisiana -- despite having promised that he'd never purchase "a single grain" of U.S. food until the travel ban was lifted -- and he invited Carter to visit.
The timely allegations of the undersecretary of state for international security, John Bolton -- that Cuba was providing bio-weapons to the so-called rogue nations of Iran and Libya -- were an obvious Miami-orchestrated attempt to derail Carter's trip, to keep the lid on any agitation to lift the travel ban, and to quash further agricultural trade.
Carter saw through this gambit. He's seen it all before. In 1977, shortly after he lifted the travel ban, "60 Minutes" aired a segment called "The Castro Connection," which alleged that Castro was involved with running drugs for the Medellin cartel through Cuba and into the United States. That charge was a staple of Reagan's policy toward Cuba, and as the Cold War morphed into the war on drugs, Cuba was forced to remain on military alert. The object of war is to never allow the enemy to rest, and Cuba got very little sleep between 1980 and 1999. But in 1999, after finding no evidence -- other than hearsay from convicted felons in Miami -- that Cuba had ever run drugs, White House drug czar Barry McCaffrey scratched Cuba off the drug-trafficking watch list, and Drug Enforcement Administration officials, along with Coast Guard staff, traveled to Cuba to begin negotiating cooperative efforts in U.S.-Cuba drug interdiction. Cuba's removal from the drug-watch list was a major blow to anti-Castro conservatives.
Then came Sept. 11. The war on terror replaced the war on drugs, and anti-Cuban animus had to be recast as part of the nation's fight against terrorists. But rather than be cowed by the allegation that Castro was behind bio-terrorism, the seasoned Carter got pugnacious, denying the charge and demanding that the United States provide evidence.
More:
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2002/05/16/carter_cuba/index1.html
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