U.S. omits reference to Cuba

  BY TIM JOHNSON

  WASHINGTON - In a surprising announcement in early May, the Bush administration charged that Cuba maintains a ''limited offensive'' biological warfare
  capability. By Tuesday, the administration seemed to have forgotten about the matter.

  A sweeping, 177-page State Department report on trends in global terrorism summed up Cuba in 47 lines, omitting any reference to its reported
  biological warfare research.

  Officials seemed flustered when asked about the omission.

  ''It doesn't mean that it's something we're not concerned with,'' State Department counterterrorism coordinator Francis X. Taylor said.

  REICH QUESTIONED

  On Capitol Hill, Otto Reich, the department's top diplomat to Latin America, appeared initially confused when asked why the report made no mention of
  Cuba's bio-weapons research.

  ''Is it an oversight?'' asked Sen. Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat.

  ''I do not know who publishes that particular document,'' Reich said moments later when asked about the report, which Dorgan held in his hand.

  ''It's your department that publishes it,'' Dorgan said. ``This is a State Department publication, and we just received it on Capitol Hill.''

  Reich countered: ``It must be incomplete.''

  FOCUS OF PAPER

  The U.S. government considers Cuba and six other countries state sponsors of terrorism, and they were the focus of much of the new report, Patterns of
  Global Terrorism 2001.

  The document said Cuban leader Fidel Castro ''has vacillated over the war on terrorism,'' and has criticized U.S. counterterrorism actions as ``worse than
  the original attacks, militaristic and fascist.''

  Castro allows 20 Basque separatists to reside in Cuba ''as privileged guests,'' and offers ''some degree of safe haven and support'' to Colombian rebels
  who engage in terrorism, it said. It noted that Cuba hosted an Irish Republican Army explosives expert, later arrested in Colombia, and helped protect
  fugitives of a Chilean extremist group, the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front.

  Also, numerous U.S. fugitives continue to live on the island, the report says.

  FEW DETAILS

  In a headline-grabbing speech May 6, John Bolton, the undersecretary of state for arms control, charged that Cuba is researching biological warfare
  means and has shared such technology with ``rogue states.''

  He offered few details, however.

  Last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell clarified that the Bush administration doesn't believe Havana has such armaments: ``We didn't say it actually
  had some weapons, but it has the capacity and capability to conduct such research.''

  President Bush made no mention of the bio-weapons threat Monday, a day focused almost exclusively on his administration's Cuba policy. Bush offered a
  policy speech at the White House in the morning, reaffirming the U.S. embargo of Cuba, then cheered on Cuban Americans at a rally in Miami in the
  afternoon.

  In Cuba, National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcón ridiculed Bush for meeting with ''terrorists'' in Miami and said the U.S. president shouldn't talk about
  transparent elections.

  ''To go to Miami to talk about clean and honest elections and speak against what [Bush] calls electoral fraud, one has to be very brave,'' Alarcón said
  during a round table Monday night, referring to the 2000 election, which Bush won by a slight margin.

  FORMER SENATORS

  In a new sign that the White House faces significant domestic opposition outside of Florida to its Cuba policy, a bipartisan group of 48 former U.S.
  senators sent a letter to the White House calling for normalization of relations with Cuba.

  ''We are the only nation in the world to have an economic embargo and boycott of Cuba,'' the letter read, ``and the clear lesson of recent history is that
  if economic sanctions are to be successful, they must have strong international support.''

  Among the signers were several former senators considered hawks on foreign policy matters, including Republicans Malcolm Wallop and Alan Simpson,
  both of Wyoming, and Jake Garn of Utah. Democrats included Sam Nunn of Georgia and Lloyd Bentsen of Texas.