Sweep of dissidents intensifies in Cuba

HAVANA — Fidel Castro’s government has begun rounding up some of its better known critics as part of a mushrooming crackdown spurred by allegations of dissidents conspiring with US diplomats.

With the world focused on the war on Iraq, Cuban authorities grew bolder Thursday evening, picking up Raul Rivero, the island’s best known independent journalist, as they started looking at higher-profile dissidents.

“He is only a man who writes, he is not a politician,” Rivero’s wife, Blanca Reyes, said after agents carried big black plastic bags full of documents from their home and sped away with her husband in the back seat of a Russia-made Lada sedan. Rivero’s 83 year-old mother, Hortensia Castaneda, wept quietly at her side in a white wooden rocker.

State security agents on Thursday evening also detained Hector Palacios, a leading organiser of the Varela Project reform effort, after an extensive search of his home, said veteran rights activist Elizardo Sanchez.

Alleged sniper pleads guilty

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut — An alleged associate of one of the Washington, DC-area sniper suspects pleaded guilty to federal immigration and passport charges.

Norman Manroe, a Jamaican native, pleaded guilty Thursday in US District Court to conspiracy to make a false statement on a passport application and illegal re-entry by a deported alien, US Attorney Kevin J O’Connor said.

Manroe faces up to five years in prison and deportation at sentencing, scheduled for June 6.

Officials of the Caribbean island Antigua believe Manroe showed sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad how to illegally obtain passports. Authorities say they do not believe Manroe played a role in last fall’s sniper shootings.

Muhammad, 42, and his alleged accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, 18, have been linked to 20 shootings, including 13 deaths, in Virginia, Maryland, Louisiana, Georgia and the District of Columbia. Muhammad is scheduled for trial in October, with Malvo facing trial in November. Both could get the death penalty.

Castro says war on Iraq makes UN meaningless

SANTO DOMINGO — Cuban President Fidel Castro said the US-led war with Iraq was decided by “stepping over the Security Council” and makes the United Nations meaningless.

“The United Nations has been totally ignored and, in fact, one can no longer say the United Nations exists,” Castro said in a 15-minute television interview broadcast by the Dominican Republic National News Network on Thursday night.

Some governments that support the war “have been subject to a great deal of pressure,” he added.

The interview was conducted in Havana on Wednesday night, after the United States attacked Baghdad, by Peggy Cabral, a Dominican politician and widow of socialist leader Francisco Pena Gomez.

Dressed in signature green military fatigues, Castro accused the United States of being a warmonger: “It’s a war that really did not want to be avoided. It was desired.”

Dual citizenship legal issue

ST JOHN’S, Antigua — Opposition legislators failed to introduce a motion for the removal of a governing party senator on the grounds that he illegally held dual citizenship while serving four years in public office.

Senate minority leader Colin Derrick introduced a bill Thursday in the upper house to have Senator Guy Yearwood ousted, after the government said Wednesday he held passports for both Antigua and Canada.

Senate Vice-President Llewllyn Smith turned down the motion for debate, saying he was awaiting legal advice on Yearwood’s eligibility.

The decision prompted Derrick and two other United Progressive Party senators to walk out of Thursday’s session.

Yearwood, of the governing Antigua Labor Party, gained Canadian citizenship in the 1980s while working in the visa section of the Antiguan consulate in Canada, the government said.

British company drops claim for compensation

GEORGETOWN, Guyana — A British supermarket chain has abandoned its multimillion dollar claim demanding Guyana’s government pay compensation for taking over British-owned sugar industry 27 years ago, an official said.

The Big Food Group, which had taken over the Guyana sugar assets from London-based Booker Cash and Carry, was demanding 12 million pounds (US$18.8 million, Guyanese $3.3 billion) in compensation from 1989, when the government stopped making payments.

The government began defaulting on the payments in 1989 because Big Food began also demanding interest, government lawyer Michael Tang said Thursday.

“We had hired a lawyer to represent us, and our main argument was that Big Food was a rogue creditor because we had no arrangement with them, but rather with Booker,” Tang said.

Booker had owned sugar estates in the former British colony for decades until 1976, when the then-socialist government seized the industry assets.