Cuba condemns U.S. military strikes

CNN August 20, 1998

Cuba condemns U.S. military strikes

                  HAVANA (Reuters) -- Communist-run Cuba, one of a handful of states on
                  Washington's list of alleged terrorism sponsors, condemned Thursday's U.S.
                  military attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan as "arrogant" and
                  counterproductive.

                  "President William Clinton ignored the sovereignty of Sudan and Afghanistan
                  and launched a theatrical bombardment which overshadowed his recent sex
                  scandal," said state-run news agency Prensa Latina, which generally
                  expresses the opinions of Cuba's ruling Communist Party.

                  "But the attacks, with the pretext of answering terrorism, may fuel more
                  violence instead of eliminating it," the news agency added in its first report on
                  the strikes.

                  The United States launched attacks on Sudan and Afghanistan earlier
                  Thursday to hit what Clinton called "terrorist-related" bases believed to have
                  been behind the recent bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania
                  that killed more than 200 people.

The Prensa Latina article, "Arrogance does not kill terrorism, it fuels it,"
warned that the strikes may provoke further violence.

                  "The arrogant use of military bases in the region to respond to the attacks on
                  the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania may create a chain reaction," it
                  said.

                  It added that the lack of social justice for Arab nations and the "bias" of the
                  United States in the Middle East "explain in part, although they do not justify,
                  some extremist actions against the U.S. military presence in the zone."

                  Cuba, at odds with the United States since Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution,
                  has long supported the Palestine Liberation Organization and broke relations
                  with Israel in the early 1970s.

                  Prensa Latina's direct criticism of Clinton contrasted with Castro's recent
                  conciliatory comments about the U.S. leader whom he had called a "man of
                  peace" and absolved him of responsibility for other alleged "terrorist"
                  elements planning violence against Cuba from American soil.