Jailing of 75 could hurt trade, diplomatic ties

LONDON, England (Reuters) --Most of the world was watching the Iraq war when Cuba
rounded up 75 anti-Castro dissidents and sent them to jail for lengthy terms of up to 28
years.

But adverse international reaction is escalating now, from disillusioned
intellectuals to a fuming European Union, and the spotlight has swung firmly
onto President Fidel Castro's biggest crackdown in decades.

"Clearly this is going to have pretty serious repercussions," said Cuba expert
Victor Bulmer-Thomas, who heads the UK's Royal Institute of International
Affairs think-tank.

One of the most concrete consequences is to jeopardize Cuba's entry to the
Cotonou Agreement, an economic assistance pact between the E.U. and
African, Caribbean and Pacific nations. Entry would have symbolic importance
for long-isolated Cuba and access to much-needed European aid.

But European Commission spokesman Diego de Ojeda said this week: "These
latest difficulties will clearly affect relationships and the prospects of access."

"We clearly condemn all of these steps, notably the executions," he added, a
reference to Cuba's shooting by firing squad this month of three men who
hijacked a ferry in a failed bid to reach the United States.

Trade and investment in Cuba by various E.U. nations has helped save the
ailing economy since the collapse of the Soviet bloc, but they are cutting back
diplomatic contacts in protest. The Dutch have withdrawn a commercial mission
to Havana and Spain pulled out of a cultural festival.

"The recent wave of arrests in Cuba is deplorable," said Britain's human rights
minister Bill Rammell, after calling in Cuba's ambassador to complain. "These
arrests are extremely bad for the image of Cuba, which has done much to build
a society with good social indicators."

E.U. now 'in an impossible position'

Cuba may have hoped the world would not take so much notice because of the
Iraq war, but the length and quantity of sentences and the inclusion of prominent
figures, like dissident journalist Raul Rivero and economist Martha Beatriz
Roque, were sure to provoke an outcry.

"The E.U. desperately wants to keep friendly with Cuba and is prepared to
overlook a lot, not least on the human rights agenda, but the scale of this has
put them in an impossible position," said another Cuba specialist, Antoni
Kapcia.

Havana says the dissidents were conspiring with U.S. diplomats to subvert its
one-party state.

Many had met American diplomats including Washington's senior envoy to
Havana, James Cason, in what Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque
called an attempt to create a "fifth column" in the long-running U.S. conflict with
Cuba.

Cuba is nervous the new American enthusiasm for regime change could be
applied to Castro. "Our small country is more threatened today than ever by a
superpower that plans to impose a dictatorship on a global scale," wrote a
group of pro-government Cuban artists in a letter published in some European
media.

"Cuba has been obliged to take measures that it did not wish to take."

Havana has made much of a banner at a rally by anti-Castro Cuban exiles in
Miami which said "Iraq Now, Cuba Later."

"They do see the noose tightening round their neck with the fall of Saddam and
a belligerent U.S. already turning its sights on other areas like Syria,"
Bulmer-Thomas added.

Analyst: Concessions may be planned

Other factors may also be involved.

Castro clearly wanted to rein in the increasingly confident dissident movement.
He might also have been strengthening his bargaining position for a possible
exchange with five agents convicted in the United States on spying charges.

"Whatever the case, I expect the sentences to be reduced sooner rather than
later and also some sort of steady release or emigration of most of them,
depending on what concessions are exacted from the U.S.," Kapcia said.

Criticism has come from all over the world, including numerous Latin American
neighbours, human rights groups, communist parties in Europe and previously
Castro-friendly intellectuals such as Portuguese writer Jose Saramago.

Some have even compared it with the so-called "Padilla Affair" in 1971 when
the watershed jailing of critical poet Heberto Padilla ended the support for
Castro from prominent European left-wing intellectuals such as Jean-Paul
Sartre.

Copyright 2003 Reuters.