Cuba says China sending beans and buttons, not arms Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - JosePertierra@aol.com Cuba says China sending beans and buttons, not arms By Andrew Cawthorne HAVANA, June 19 (Reuters) - Denying China was secretly exporting arms and explosives to Cuba, President Fidel Castro said on Tuesday the fellow communist nation's shipments were in reality harmless cargoes ranging from beans to buttons. Castro was responding to a report last week in The Washington Times saying American intelligence officials had traced at least three Chinese military shipments to the Cuban port of Mariel in recent months. "For more than 30 years, Cuba has not imported any weapons from China," Castro insisted on state TV's nightly "roundtable" -- a two-hour program which began during the saga over Cuban shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez and has since been institutionalized as a mouthpiece for official views. In rare comments on the secretive world of Cuba's military, Castro went further to say the Caribbean island had in fact bought no arms since the collapse of the Soviet bloc at the start of the 1990s. "Since the beginning of the 'special period', more than 10 years ago, Cuba has not invested a single cent in arms," he said, using the official term for the economic crisis Cuba suffered after the collapse of its ally, the Soviet Union. Castro called The Washington Times report "lies, hypocrisy." The report caused a stir in some diplomatic circles because if Beijing was sending arms to Havana, that might open it to sanctions from Washington. The United States threatens action against any nation exporting military equipment to countries like Cuba which are on its list of alleged state sponsors of terrorism. With his usual gleeful attention to detail when seeking to rebut his enemies, Castro listed the three shipments from China to Cuba referred to in The Washington Times' article. RICE, NOT ROCKETS The first, he said, did indeed include equipment for Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces. But it consisted of more than 1 million cubic meters of fabrics, 5,000 pairs of boots, more than 3 million buttons, nearly 100,000 needles, large quantities of thread, and various items of medical equipment -- all donated by China. "There you have the great arms shipment," Castro said. The second boat brought several tonnes of materials for use in explosives for Cuba's construction ministry in the building of tunnels, sewage channels and other works, as well as a cargo of beans, Castro said. The third of the three boats, all of which came to Cuba last year, was bringing only foodstuffs -- rice and beans -- for the local population. Castro said the "little campaign" by the "reactionary organ," The Washington Times, should not be taken seriously, and he condemned the "diabolical mechanism" by which its report was repeated by other media and picked up by anti-communist groups in the United States. "When you repeat something so much, it seems likes it's a consummated fact," he said. Castro said that as well as "industrial quantities" of munitions, Cuba retained the capacity to lay a network of anti-tank and anti infantry mines, which was why Havana had not signed a global anti-mine treaty. "What do they want? To invade us without any problem, march all over the country without any problem?" he asked. 21:30 06-19-01 ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytas-06.19.01-22:38:44-28037