STATEMENT BY CUBAN FOREIGN MINISTRY

                   The Republic of Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been able to
                   confirm that, despite the international campaign being waged against
                   terrorism, the terrorist mafia located in Miami and Panama has
                   maintained its activities. Their goal is to abort the legal proceedings
                   against terrorists Luis Posada Carriles, Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo,
                   Guillermo Novo Sampoli and Pedro Remón Rodríguez, who are guilty
                   of innumerable crimes against our people, and who are currently
                   being held in Panama for plotting to assassinate our president during
                   the 10th Ibero-American Summit, at the end of 2000 in Panama.

                   Those terrorists had planned to place high-powered plastic explosives
                   in the University of Panama’s auditorium, where Comrade Fidel was
                   scheduled to speak. If their plan had succeeded, it would have caused
                   the deaths of hundreds of students and professors from that
                   university, as well as others participating in that rally.

                   The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has kept our people informed about
                   the various developments in this case, during the 16 months since
                   the terrorists’ arrest, including the refusal on the part of the Republic
                   of Panama’s government to extradite them. This is despite the fact
                   that our country filed the extradition request for the four terrorists in
                   the proper time period and in accordance with the norms established
                   for such cases, both in Panamanian legislation and in the Bustamante
                   Code, the legal instrument applied in our region in these matters.

                   Since their arrest, it has been confirmed that diverse individuals
                   belonging to the terrorist mafia in Miami and Panama have unleashed
                   a campaign attempting to misrepresent the four terrorists’ criminal
                   activities. This campaign has included press and radio notes, the
                   movement of considerable amounts of money, and even interviews
                   with Panamanian government figures, for the purpose of trying to
                   influence the legal process in that country concerning the four
                   terrorists. Indeed, it has been proven that large sums of money have
                   been sent from the United States to finance their defense and to
                   attempt to bribe the legal officials linked to the trial.

                   At the same time, preparations have been renewed for the possible
                   escape of Posada Carriles and his cohorts to a Central American
                   country. Surprisingly, the detained terrorists have developed a series
                   of "ailments" that have led to their being taken to hospitals several
                   times. As Cuba has denounced more than once, these are evident
                   attempts on the part of the Miami mafia to create the conditions for
                   rescuing them. This indeed was the case when the very same Posada
                   Carriles was rescued from a high-security Venezuelan prison, after
                   having been jailed for masterminding the 1976 explosion of a Cuban
                   airliner off the coast of Barbados; Posada Carriles was transferred to
                   El Salvador, and from there he supplied arms to the Nicaraguan
                   counterrevolutionary bands. Venezuelan authorities recently solicited
                   his extradition to their country, so that he could be tried for having
                   escaped. Likewise, Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo, another of the four
                   terrorists being held in Panama, fled a Mexican prison after killing
                   Cuban fishing technician D’Artagnan Díaz Díaz.

                   Despite the fact that Dr. Humberto Más, director of Panama’s Legal
                   Medicine Institute, explained the terrorists’ health status in a clear
                   public statement, the defense lawyers keep trying to demonstrate
                   the allegedly "deteriorated" health of the accused, and have
                   presented motions that the four terrorists’ form of detention should
                   be modified to house arrest, which would imply lowered security
                   measures and facilitate the planned escape.

                   Added to all this in recent weeks are several worrisome
                   developments, about which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wishes to
                   issue an energetic alert.

                   In the first place, the Panamanian courts have rejected the four
                   charges filed against the accused by student, trade union and
                   indigenous organizations, emphasizing the enormous number of
                   victims that would have resulted if the four terrorists had been able
                   to carry out the assassination attempt as planned, although in fact it
                   was foiled by the joint action of the Cuban and Panamanian security
                   forces. Now those claimants have filed an appeal with Panama’s
                   Supreme Court of Justice, in hopes that their just demands will no
                   longer fall on deaf ears.

                   In the second place, the report presented to the Superior Court by
                   the Attorney General’s Office of the Republic of Panama, to
                   contribute to the determination of which court will try the terrorists in
                   Panama, has eliminated the accusation of attempted murder, which
                   precisely described the main crime committed by the four terrorists
                   in that country.

                   But even more serious is the way that Luis Posada Carriles’ defense
                   lawyer – linked to the most spurious interests of the Miami mafia –
                   has manipulated the fact that the attempted murder charge was
                   dropped. He alleges that this omission on the part of the
                   prosecutor’s office constitutes recognition of his client’s "innocence."
                   This allegation has been picked up by the Panamanian press, and
                   even international news agencies.

                   And even more serious than that is the fact that the Salvadoran
                   government announced that it is requesting extradition for Luis
                   Posada Carriles, for crimes he is alleged to have carried out in that
                   Central American nation. This is an obvious maneuver to try and
                   rescue someone who, for years, established his headquarters in San
                   Salvador in order to hatch his most sinister plots, and who had the
                   complicity of that country’s high-ranking officials. This is not the first
                   time that Cuba has denounced this fact and has given the Salvadoran
                   government detailed and trustworthy information in this regard.

                   This sudden request, 16 months after Posada Carriles was arrested,
                   takes place at a moment characterized by fierce propaganda
                   regarding his alleged "innocence." And we must consider the kind of
                   petitioners and their longtime links to the notorious international
                   terrorist and to Miami mafia representatives whose travels to and
                   from Panama would certainly have allowed them to finance and
                   orchestrate those maneuvers. Our people and international public
                   opinion must denounce these facts.

                   In the face of this situation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs warns that
                   in Miami’s counterrevolutionary circles they are enthusiastically
                   talking about the upcoming release of the terrorists and that, at the
                   very most, they will be given short prison terms.

                   Counterrevolutionaries in Panama, headed by Raymond Molina and
                   former Panama City Mayor Mayín Correa, continue to apply public
                   pressure for the four men’s release, using all the means within their
                   reach. Correa took advantage of a recent visit to Panama by Miami
                   terrorists, who traveled there for the express purpose of helping
                   Posada Carriles and his accomplices. She invited U.S. terrorists René
                   Cruz Cruz, Eusebio Peñalver Mazorra and Jorge Borrego to appear
                   on her KW Continente radio program. The first two have long records
                   of planning terrorist acts against our country, and are closely linked
                   with Posada Carriles.

                   Terrorists Santiago Alvarez Fernández-Magriña and Nelsy Ignacio
                   Castro Matos have also repeatedly visited Panama for the same
                   purpose. This is a good moment to recall that the list of names
                   presented by Cuba to the Panamanian authorities on November 10,
                   2000, on the eve of the 10th Ibero-American Summit, included the
                   best known terrorists who have recently hatched plots to
                   assassinate President Fidel Castro. They are René Cruz Cruz, Eusebio
                   Peñalver Mazorra, Santiago Alvarez Fernández-Magriña and Nelsy
                   Ignacio Castro Matos.

                   On November 17, 2000, after the Cuban leader publicly denounced
                   the plan to assassinate him in Panama, he handed over information
                   on the plots to the Panamanian authorities. The report also
                   mentioned Santiago Alvarez Fernández-Magriña as being involved in
                   the plan.

                   In the first years after the triumph of the Revolution, Cruz Cruz and
                   Peñalver Mazorra belonged to the counterrevolutionary bands
                   organized, armed and financed by the U.S. Central Intelligence
                   Agency, and they were severely punished for those activities. When
                   they completed their sentences, both of them became active in
                   terrorist organizations operating against our country from U.S.
                   territory, held positions of responsibility in some of them, and were
                   even involved in the preparation of a plan to assassinate Venezuelan
                   President Hugo Chávez.

                   Meanwhile, Alvarez Fernández-Magriña – also directly linked to the
                   Cuban American National Foundation and other terrorist
                   organizations in the United States – was one of those planning to
                   participate with Luis Posada Carriles and the three other terrorists
                   arrested in Panama, in the attempt to kill the Cuban president during
                   the 10th Ibero-American Summit in Panama. Although in the end he
                   did not participate, he was closely linked to the preparations for that
                   foiled action.

                   Nelsy Ignacio Castro Matos is an active member of several terrorist
                   organizations and carried out numerous operations of that kind
                   against civilian and commercial objectives belonging to Cuba and
                   other Latin American countries.

                   He has been a friend of Luis Posada Carriles since they worked
                   together in Venezuela’s Intelligence and Prevention Services Division
                   (DISIP) in the 1970s. After Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch were
                   imprisoned for their participation in the explosion of the Cubana
                   airliner off the coast of Barbados in 1976, he continued to be a close
                   collaborator of those terrorists and served as their liaison with
                   terrorist groups in Miami, taking advantage of his position as an
                   official of the Republic of Venezuela.

                   In the 1980s, Castro Matos became involved in plots to assassinate
                   President Fidel Castro, and along with the four terrorists now held in
                   Panama, he was active in the preparation of the plan to kill the Cuban
                   leader during the 10th Ibero-American Summit in November 2000.

                   This terrorist – who, as we have noted, travels frequently to Panama
                   to visit the four detainees – pays for, along with other Cuban
                   terrorists living in the United States, the expenses incurred in the
                   judicial process and is actively involved in creating the conditions for
                   Posada Carriles and his accomplices to flee the Panamanian jails.

                   Now Posada Carriles’ Salvadoran accomplices have entered the fray.
                   It would be disgraceful if Panamanian authorities – who unjustly
                   rejected the extradition of the four terrorists to Cuba, despite the
                   care and precision with which our government took all of the
                   necessary steps, and who to date have not responded to the
                   Venezuelan authorities’ request to extradite Posada Carriles, a
                   fugitive from that country’s justice – agreed now to El Salvador’s
                   extradition request, whose objectives are evident.

                   The Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants our people to know about the
                   maneuvers being carried out to prevent the four terrorists held in
                   Panama from being punished, after they have caused so much
                   suffering among our people, and to know about the moral character
                   of those who, following the orders of the Cuban American National
                   Foundation and other terrorist organizations in Miami, are conspiring
                   on the terrorists’ behalf.

                   Havana, March 12, 2002