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THE HERALD
THE AMERICAS
CUBA
Dissident meeting usurped
■ A press meeting called
by Cuban dissidents was
broken up without violence
by government supporters
in what may be Havana’s
newest strategy in dealing
with coverage in the media.
BY ANITA SNOW
Associated Press
HAVANA — Government
supporters commandeered a
news media gathering called
by dissidents Friday morning,
using impassioned speeches
and shouts of ‘‘Viva Fidel Castro!’’ to draw journalists’ attention away from their opponents.
The rapid, nonviolent
breakup of the morning gathering outside the European
Union’s mission in Havana
marked a new strategy in the
government’s recent handling
of the international media’s
coverage of public appearances by dissidents.
While three pro-Castro militants loudly complained on
camera to international
reporters about the dissidents,
referring to them as mercenaries and worms, the opposition
leaders who called the media
out quietly slipped away.
The whole event lasted less
than a half-hour.
‘‘Well, we believe in
democracy and that people
can think differently,’’ wellknown dissident leader Martha Beatriz Roque told reporters before she and two other
opposition leaders left the area
while cameras and micro-
LATIN AND CARIBBEAN BRIEFS
President Castro referred
to the protests during his
Rebellion Day speech last
week, defending counter-protests. Castro said supporters
will respond likewise ‘‘as long
as traitors and mercenaries go
one millimeter beyond what
the revolutionary people . . .
are willing to permit.’’
reinforcements to a
southern province where
FARC guerrillas have
declared an ‘‘armed
strike,’’ Colombia’s
government is having
trouble regaining control.
VATICAN CITY — The archbishop of Buenos Aires
started the beatification process for three priests and two
seminarians killed in the 1970s during Argentina’s ‘‘Dirty
War,’’ Vatican Radio said Thursday, seeking to have them
declared martyrs for their faith.
The move — the first step toward possible sainthood — is
significant because the Catholic Church in general and Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio in particular were criticized at the
time for failing to call attention to atrocities of the military
dictatorship then in power.
The five members of the Pallotine order — Revs. Pedro
Duffau, Alfredo Leaden and Alfredo Kelly — and seminarians
Salvador Barbeito and Emilio Barletti, were found shot to
death July 4, 1976, inside the parish of St. Patrick in Buenos
Aires.
Their killers were never found, but testimony gathered by
police said the killers may have been agents from the Navy
School of Mechanics, the chief detention center of Argentina’s past dictatorship, Vatican Radio reported.
PORT-AU-PRINCE —
The United States will provide Haitian police with pistols, rifles and tear gas to aid
the fight against armed militants ahead of elections this
fall, the American ambassador said Friday.
The shipment is an
exception to the arms
embargo that the United
States imposed on the
Caribbean nation in 1991,
and is intended to help control the wave of violence
that threatens to undermine
elections scheduled for
October and November,
U.S. Ambassador James
Foley said.
public protests and the news
coverage of them. In both
cases, they were broken up by
government supporters in
much more aggressive ways,
with shouting, shoving, the
surrounding of dissidents’
homes and some arrests. Nevertheless, no injuries were
reported in either event.
■ Despite sending army
From Herald Wire Services
DUBLIN — Three men
linked to the Irish Republican Army who were convicted of training rebels in
Colombia have returned
surreptitiously to Ireland
eight months after going on
the run.
RTE, the Irish national
broadcasters, carried an
interview with one of the
fugitives, Jim Monaghan. He
said all three had returned
to Ireland within the past
few days.
‘‘And, as you can imagine,
a lot of people in a lot of
countries had to help us,’’
said Monaghan, an IRA veteran in his 60s.
Monaghan said he
couldn’t provide any details
of how the three evaded the
international arrest warrant
facing them.
Spokesmen for the British and Irish governments
on Friday denied any
advance knowledge of the
three men’s return.
Colombia on Friday
demanded the Irish government extradite the fugitives,
who were convicted by a
Colombian court and sentenced to 17 years in prison.
JORGE REY/AP
CRASHER: Government worker Lazaro Suarez shouts
pro-revolution slogans to media in Havana on Friday.
Troops failing to rein in FARC
5 killed in Dirty War
may become saints
•HAITI
U.S. WILL ARM
HAITIAN POLICE
between European Commission representatives and relatives of dissidents imprisoned
in a recent pair of public protests.
The majority of the prisoners’ relatives, as well as Roque
and fellow dissident leaders
Felix Bonne and Angel
Polanco, were not allowed
inside the mission. Roque said
just five relatives of two of the
prisoners were let in.
The EU mission released a
declaration later in the day
saying the meeting with relatives of political prisoners was
not of a political nature, and
was canceled once officials
saw what was taking place
outside.
Cuban authorities were
enraged by the two earlier
COLOMBIA
ARGENTINA
•COLOMBIA
3 WHO FLED COLOMBIA
RETURN TO IRELAND
phones focused increasingly
on the government supporters
who showed up to complain.
‘‘We are really tired of
these sellouts supported by
the United States,’’ said Lázaro
Enrique
Suarez,
who
described himself as a civilian
government worker who happened to be in the area when
the crowd formed outside the
mission.
Suarez and two other men
formed the core of the proCastro militants, who were
later joined by five or six others, including several who displayed a red, white and blue
Cuban flag.
Roque called international
journalists late Thursday
about the Friday morning
event, described as a meeting
BY STEVEN DUDLEY
sdudley@herald.com
ORITO, Colombia — Red
and orange flames engulfed
the 80-foot trees and rolled
down a hill toward the small
stream that passed through a
hamlet. A plume of black
smoke snaked toward the sky.
Celimo Solano said he ran
from the nearby farm where
he was working to see if his
house had been caught up in
the oil fire after leftist guerrillas blew up a 12-inch pipeline.
It had not, but the rebels urged
the 61-year old Solano and his
wife to move away for their
own safety.
The blast just one mile
from an army base here underlined the difficult task the government is facing these days
controlling the southern province of Putumayo — a vast
jungle region along the Ecuadorean border and long a bastion of FARC guerrillas.
Twelve days ago, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia units in the region
declared an ‘‘armed strike’’ —
all commercial transport must
stop, on threat of torchings —
in what appeared to be an
attempt to lure more troops
here and ease army pressures
on the FARC in other parts of
the nation. A half-dozen vehicles have been burned already.
DEPLOYMENTS
The army has sent in more
than 1,000 troop reinforcements and several armored
personnel carriers to help protect food convoys, but the
massive deployments seem to
have had little impact on the
more mobile guerrillas.
Tomatoes and rice still line
the store shelves, and the military flew in one planeload of
supplies for civilians. But residents fear that this is only the
beginning.
‘‘If this goes another week
we’ll finish off everything,’’
said Nidia Rosel, the 46-yearold manager of Supermercado
•VENEZUELA
NATION TO BUY RADAR
SYSTEMS FROM CHINA
CARACAS — Venezuela’s defense minister has
signed a deal to buy Chinese
radar systems, the latest in a
series of military purchases
by the government of President Hugo Chávez.
The Chinese-made long
range surveillance radars
will be used by Venezuela’s
air force, defense officials
said Friday.
PHOTOS BY CARLOS VILLALON/FOR THE HERALD
REBEL ATTACK: Celimo
Solano, above, looks at a
fire that was about to burn
his home during a FARC
offensive in Putumayo
region, Colombia. On the
left, a soldier walks
through an oil pipe valve.
Subasta in the oil industry
town of Orito.
Rosel said she has already
rationed sugar, and paid
higher prices and risked losing
merchandise to bring in other
staples like potatoes. But she
worries that the guerrillas may
tighten the noose.
‘‘Some people are moving
around, but with caution,’’ she
said of the drivers of trucks,
buses, and taxis not obeying
the FARC’s strike orders.
‘‘[But] it’s easier to find cowardice than bravery.’’
Since the guerrillas
declared the ‘‘armed strike,’’
they have also destroyed some
of the region’s oil pipelines
and an oil well, and knocked
out electricity — forcing residents to live by candlelight
after darkness falls. They also
blew up an important bridge,
forcing travelers to use a
makeshift ferry.
Still not clear is why the
FARC launched the attacks,
with some rebel fighters saying only that the strike is
designed to ‘‘divert’’ military
pressures elsewhere.
Some speculate that the
rebels are trying to relieve the
pressure on a rumored army
encirclement of a member of
the FARC’s high command,
Raúl Reyes. Neither the military nor the guerrillas would
confirm the accounts.
ARMY OFFENSIVE
Others believe it may be
part of an effort to disrupt a
two-year-old army campaign
in southeastern Colombia, the
center of FARC’s activities for
years. Known as Plan Patriot,
the campaign by 17,000 troops
has pushed the rebels deeper
into the jungle outposts and
greatly reduced their attacks
on military bases and towns.
Government troops and
police also have targeted Putumayo as part of a strong campaign to rid the province of its
coca farms — which in 2001
accounted for half of Colombia’s production of the raw
material for cocaine — as well
as the FARC.
A U.S.-financed herbicide
spraying campaign has wiped
out most of the coca farms.
But just last month, fighters
from the FARC’s 48th Front
attacked an army base in the
Putumayo town of Teteye,
killing 22 soldiers. ‘‘The guerrilla war is very difficult to
decipher,’’ said Lt. Col. Francisco Javier Cruz, commander
of the army battalion based in
Orito. ‘‘But the situation is
under control, because we’ve
been more on the offensive.’’
This week, Cruz mobilized
hundreds of troops toward
guerrilla strongholds along the
Ecuadorean border, where the
army and the FARC have
squared off along the Rumiyaco river.
Despite the heavy troop
presence in their area, a unit of
FARC fighters seemed largely
unconcerned when journalists
encountered them Wednesday
near the river. They moved
swiftly from hilltop to hilltop
along jungle paths they could
find even in the dead of night.
When the army soldiers
approached, they scampered
off in small groups. Fighting
soon ensued, and lasted
through the next day.
VENEZUELA
Chávez strongly denies he backs Colombian rebels
■ Venezuelan President
Hugo Chávez denied U.S.
claims that he’s supporting
Colombian guerrillas. He
accused the United States
of being a terrorist state.
CARACAS — (AP) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez strongly denied U.S.
charges that he is supporting
Colombian rebels or trying to
destabilize other South American countries, accusing the
United States of spreading lies
and of being a ‘‘terrorist state.’’
‘‘They accuse us of buying
arms to give them to the guerrillas — no, they’re for our
troops,’’ Chávez said. ‘‘They
are a terrorist state, but they
accuse us of being terrorists.’’
Chávez lashed out Thursday night at statements by U.S.
State Department officials,
who this week
accused Venezuela of backing Colombian
guerrillas with
weapons, and
funding ‘‘antidemocratic
CHAVEZ
groups’’
in
Bolivia, Ecuador and elsewhere.
Nicholas Burns, the State
Department’s third-ranking
official, told The Associated
Press on Wednesday that Venezuela was supplying weapons
to Colombia’s main leftist
group. Later, another State
Department official clarified
to The Herald that Burns’
comments did not refer to the
government of Chávez but to
Venezuela in general.
Chávez’s government has
signed a deal to buy 100,000
Kalashnikov rifles from Russia, and Chávez said the guns
are due to arrive soon.
High-ranking U.S. officials
also express alarm about
Chávez’s plans to buy military
helicopters from Russia, his
virtual domination of Venezuela’s political system and his
increasingly close ties to
Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
In some of his sharpest
comments in months, Chávez
said Washington is stepping
up a campaign of ‘‘big lies’’ to
try to isolate his government.
‘‘We don’t fear them,’’ Chávez said during a military ceremony at Fort Tiuna in Caracas. ‘‘We left behind our fear a
long time ago. We are determined to be free.’’
Chávez, a former army officer elected in 1998 on pledges
of leading a ‘‘peaceful revolu-
tion’’ for the poor, often
accuses the U.S. government
of plotting against him to try
to take control of the country’s
vast oil reserves.
Venezuela remains a major
oil supplier to the United
States, in spite of increasing
tensions that have followed a
series of accusations and
counteraccusations between
Washington and Caracas.
Chávez has said the U.S.
government backed a shortlived coup against him in 2002
and appears set to do whatever is necessary to bring him
down. U.S. officials have
brushed aside his accusations
as preposterous.
‘‘They are the dangerous
ones, and we have plenty of
proof,’’ Chávez said.
Venezuela has never sent
its troops beyond its borders
to attack anyone, Chávez said,
‘‘and look what the U.S.
empire has done.’’
He said it was ridiculous for
the ‘‘liars’’ at the U.S. State
Department to persist in
accusing Venezuela of meddling in Bolivia’s affairs by
funding groups aimed at destabilizing the country.
‘‘They say they have evidence,’’ he said, ‘‘but they
don’t present a single piece.’’
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