Embarrassed Fox Govt Reeling from Fidel's Revelations Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit RED-FACED FOX GOVERNMENTT REELING FROM FIDEL'S REVELATIONS Reports from AP, Reuters, and Radio Havana Cuba "This is the biggest disgrace Mexican foreign policy has suffered; the president's conduct is shameful," "When he asks Castro not to criticize Bush and the United States you have entered the world of the pathetic..." Even the most hostile mainstream press articles are reporting these reactions, and using the words "scandal" and "Mexico's black eye." * Associated Press via Yahoo - Tue Apr 23,11:28 PM ET Cuba Scandal Widens Rifts in Mexico by Lisa J. Adams MEXICO CITY (AP) - Mexico's latest embarrassing row with Cuba has deepened divisions between President Vicente Fox and a defiantly independent Congress. Leftist lawmakers on Tuesday accused the Mexican leader of pressuring Cuban President Fidel Castro to leave a U.N. development summit last month and then lying about it. On Monday, Castro released a tape of a private conversation confirming Fox had asked him to leave before President Bush arrived in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey for the summit. Mexican officials had vigorously denied that they orchestrated Castro's early departure. "This is the biggest disgrace Mexican foreign policy has suffered; the president's conduct is shameful," said Marti Batres, a leader of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party. Fox has not addressed the matter publicly, but Foreign Secretary Jorge Castaneda said Tuesday that the Mexican government had "absolutely nothing" to apologize for - and that Fox never asked Castro to stay away from the summit. Castaneda also reiterated the government's assertion on Monday that Mexico would maintain diplomatic relations with Cuba, but he said that Castro committed "a grave violation of a basic rule of communication between chiefs of state:" confidentiality. Fox is heard on the tape obtaining Castro's assurance that their conversation would remain private. Castro on Tuesday defended his decision to record the call - and make it public - saying national leaders need to keep such records in the interest of history. "A conversation between two heads of state is not a secret confession," Castro said. He added, "These are political conversations that interest the whole world." Historically friendly relations between Cuba and Mexico began to fray in the past three months. First, Fox and Castaneda met with political dissidents during a visit to the island in February. Later that month, Castaneda was accused of inciting several young men to crash a stolen bus into the Mexican Embassy's gates in Havana. Then came Fox's request that Castro make a hasty exit from the summit. And in the final blow that provoked the Cuban leader to reveal his conversation with Fox, Mexico backed a U.N. human rights resolution on Friday censuring Cuba for its human rights record. In a live radio interview Tuesday, Castaneda alleged that Castro released the taped conversation with Fox to divert attention from his growing diplomatic isolation. "Internally, it does enormous damage to the antidemocratic and human rights-violating regime of Fidel Castro to know that the government of Mexico no longer supports the absence of democracy and lack of respect for human rights in Cuba," Castaneda said. The Cuba-related controversies have done little to help what most consider an already poor working relationship between the Mexican Congress and Fox. Congress has rejected all of the president's major initiatives since his election in July 2000. With few days left in the current session and only two sessions preceding 2003 elections, it is practically impossible that Fox's most important proposals - fiscal reform and reforms of the electricity and oil sectors - are going to be discussed further in the current Congress. "So in a way, relations couldn't get any worse," said Benito Nacif, political analyst and congressional expert at the Center for Economic Development Research in Mexico City. "It no longer matters all that much. What matters is who emerges with the public's support in terms of the relationship with Cuba. This is going to be the fight." It's unclear who will win, but the topic has already generated protests and violence. Early Tuesday, a gasoline bomb was thrown against the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City but failed to ignite. No arrests have been made. Mexico was the only Latin American nation that refused to cut ties with the island after the 1959 revolution that brought Castro to power, and many here still identify Mexico's revolutionary history with Cuba's. Fox, who has cultivated friendly relations with Bush, has gradually shifted Mexico's attitude closer to the U.S. policy. The challenge of the newly independent Congress now is to balance criticism of Fox and his Cuban policy against the risk of being seen as supporting a foreign leader instead of their own president. "They don't want to be seen as fracturing national unity," Nacif said. Under more than seven decades of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, Congress traditionally did little more than rubber stamp the president's initiatives. But when Fox became the first opposition candidate to assume the presidency, the legislature was faced with a new role as a legitimate balance of executive power. Earlier this month, lawmakers blocked Fox from leaving the country, and they have ordered Castaneda to appear before them to explain his actions regarding Cuba. Fox has accused the PRI, which has a plurality in Congress, of blocking his initiatives, while lawmakers accuse the president of failing to effectively promote and negotiate his proposals. "The government has no political operatives in Congress," Batres was recently quoted as saying. "They don't tell us what's going on. They don't try to gauge the sensitivity of each issue. * Reuters via Yahoo - Tue Apr 23, 6:35 PM ET Mexico's Fox Suffers Black Eye in Joust with Castro By Andrew Hurst MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Cuban President Fidel Castro has acutely embarrassed Mexico's President Vicente Fox and given Fox's critics more ammunition to use against him, analysts said on Tuesday. But the Cuban leader has also come across as ungracious by flagrantly breaching international protocol and revealing, in an incident tinged with farce, details of a conversation both men had agreed in advance was private, the analysts said. Castro said on Monday in a national broadcast that Fox lied about the Cuban leader's abrupt departure in March from a United Nations summit and played a tape of a confidential telephone conversation between the two men to prove the point. A red-faced Mexican government has called unacceptable Castro's decision to broadcast the conversation but said it would not break off diplomatic relations, which have been under increasing strain in recent months. Some critics ridiculed Castro's gambit, saying it was bombastic but ineffective. "He (Castro) thinks it (the Fox government) is a house of cards and that with one gust of wind from the bearded lion it's going to fall down," said Federico Estevez, a political science professor at Mexico City's ITAM University. Others believed Fox emerged with little credit from the affair by having been exposed as a fumbling liar. The Mexican president had always denied asking Castro to cut short his visit to Monterrey. "When he asks Castro not to criticize Bush and the United States you have entered the world of the pathetic," said Dan Lund, an opinion pollster based in Mexico City, who heads a market research organization called Mund. "It tends to make Fox look like someone who creates problems rather than solves then," he added. CASTRO VENTS WRATH Castro's attempt to humiliate Fox seemed to have been prompted by anger over Mexico breaking precedent and supporting a vote of censure of Cuba by the U.N. Human Rights Commission. Mexico's Foreign Secretary Jorge Castaneda said Castro was trying to use the dispute with Mexico to distract attention at home from the U.N. vote "which is producing a very complicated effect in Cuba." "This ... is what Castro is trying to remedy by doing what he has always done ... deflecting attention from his internal problems," Castaneda told a radio network. Mexico's opposition, dominated by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which ruled Mexico for seven decades before Fox's 2000 election win, have been incensed by what they see as Fox's mishandling of once warm relations with Cuba. The PRI, together with the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), have the whip hand in Congress where Fox's conservative National Action Party lacks an overall majority and has failed to make much headway with an ambitious reform agenda. "Fox's legislative agenda will be further complicated by a recalcitrant Congress," said Delal Baer, a specialist on Mexican affairs at Johns Hopkins University in Washington. Fox's office canceled an interview scheduled for Wednesday with U.S. broadcasting network NBC in what appeared to be a sign of nervousness over the affair. In the president-to-president conversation, Fox pleaded with Castro to leave the summit early and to refrain from saying anything to the conference that might offend President Bush. Thinking he had struck a deal with Castro, Fox asked the Cuban leader to stay for lunch with him in Monterrey before leaving. Fox's clear but unstated aim was to have Castro out of the way before Bush's arrival. "So long as you don't serve me turkey in mole sauce and lots of food, because I will have to fly back here full," said Castro, in response to the lunch invitation. Fox, who in the conversation always referred to Castro as Fidel while the Cuban leader addressed Fox respectfully as "president," assured Castro that he will be served "cabrito," a goat meat dish popular in Monterrey. * MEXICO REACTS TO FIDEL'S REVELATION OF DECEIT BY FOX GOVERNMENT Havana, April 23 (RHC)--Reaction has been swift to last night's televised revelation by President Fidel Castro of Mexican President Vicente Fox pressuring him not to stay long at last month's international Monterrey Conference on Development. The Cuban leader had left the conference after only attending the plenary session and making a short speech and a subsequent announcement indicating that his presence had caused problems and that he was departing forthwith for Cuba. In subsequent comments to the press, both President Fox and his foreign minister, Jorge Castañeda, denied that any pressure had been brought to bear on the Cuban leader to cut short his participation at the conference to accommodate US President George Bush. Yet last night's recording of a conversation Fidel Castro had with the Mexican president on the subject clearly indicated the contrary. The Mexican daily La Jornada headlined the issue with concern over a possible break in Cuba-Mexico relations. The newspaper said that this was clear evidence that Vicente Fox had "repeatedly lied to the public" about whether or not he had pressured the Cuban president to reduce his length of stay at the conference. The Cuban leader said last night that he regretted having to go as far as divulging the contents of his conversation with Fox but that this was the only way to expose the deceit that had culminated in a vote against Cuba by Mexico at the United Nation Human Rights Commission last week. The Mexican president had previously promised Cuba that no such vote would be made by his country but apparently succumbed to the influence of his anti-Cuba foreign minister, Jorge Castañeda. The Mexican daily, El Universal, opined that Cuba and Mexico should remain friends and not allow this instance to destroy such a long and fruitful relationship. It said that any damage would be to the detriment of the people of Mexico and not its leader or his party. Members of parliament from a number of different Mexican parties expressed concern today that their president had not acted in a manner expected of a nation's leader and that he was far too influenced by the opinions of Washington. Emilio Ulloa, of the Party of Democratic Revolution or PRD, said that Fox had carried on a duplicitous role in which he had lied on television when he announced in March that nothing had happened in relation to pressuring Fidel Castro. At that time Fox had called for proof, so -- said critics in Mexico -- the Cuban President had provided that proof and was now being criticized for doing so by the very same people who clamored for it earlier. Ulloa said that the telephone conversation clearly exposed Fox's dependency on the United States and demanded a full explanation of why he had pressured Fidel Castro to cut short his stay in Monterrey. Another PRD legislator, Martín Batres, said that the affair was shameful and showed that the government had become an instrument for Washington's petitions. The Mayor of Mexico City said today that Fox had a lot of explaining to do and that it would do his country no good to remain silent on the issue. Efrén Leyva, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party or PRI said that with his treatment of Cuba, Vicente Fox had clearly decided to change the solidarity that Mexico traditionally had with Latin America to ally itself with the United States. The Cuban leader appeared again on national television tonight to discuss the issues surrounding his revelations of Monday night. Speaking from the nation's nightly roundtable studio, Fidel Castro told listeners that he felt the person most responsible for the events that had affected Cuba-Mexico relations for the worst was the Mexican Foreign Minister, Jorge Castañeda. Commenting that President Vicente Fox was a decent person, the Cuban leader said that nonetheless Mexico depended on the United States and that Fox had succumbed to the negative influence of Castañeda and his owners in Washington. Answering criticism that he had released the text of a private conversation, the President said that it had been an official call between two heads of state that would one day be public information. It was not a personal call. He said that the conversation had been taped as a matter of course -- all governments do this for the record. This was the first time that Cuba had been forced to release such a tape under such circumstances, he added. * RHC Viewpoint: A GENTLEMEN'S AGREEMENT? When Vicente Fox was elected President of Mexico, there was a slight feeling of trepidation here in Cuba. In his previous life, Fox was the president of the multinational US Coca-Cola Company in Mexico and is obviously a very successful businessman. How would he make out as a President of a country that has such strong fraternal links with Cuba? The general consensus was that he would respect the extremely solid and amicable longstanding relations between both countries that have spanned more than a hundred years. The solidarity between the Cuban and the Mexican peoples has also been amply demonstrated over the long years of struggle for both Mexican and Cuban independence from US imperialism. In other words, in spite of President Fox's alliance with the United States, Cuba could expect him to behave as a gentleman when it came to dealing with Cuba. Unfortunately, recent events have shown another side to Mexican politics. The tension that is now clouding Cuba-Mexico relations has been gathering momentum since Mexico's foreign minister, Jorge Castañeda, unveiled his alliance with Washington's policy on Cuba and the anti-Cuba right-wing movement in Miami. The tension has now come to a head, culminating in the public presentation by Fidel Castro, at a press conference in Havana yesterday, of his telephone conversation with President Vicente Fox prior to his visit to the United Nations Summit in Monterrey, Mexico. President Castro began his press conference yesterday by saying that he was reluctant to expose the evidence of what unfolded in Monterrey, which forced him to leave the same day he addressed the Summit. At the time he could not disclose the evidence without implications for the Mexican Head of State. Obviously the Cuban President felt that he had no other option other than to expose the machinations of Castañeda and his influence on the Mexican President. Fidel Castro pointed out that Castañeda in Washington had hatched the recent conspiracy against Cuba in Geneva. He went on to say that "Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda volunteered to give a Latin American face to the new and treacherous maneuver. A cynical, rigged and misleading proposal had to be promoted by Latin American delegations in the Human Rights Commission. That is what he did for the year 2001, thus creating several incidents with Cuba, which were severely criticized by political figures and members of the Mexican House of Deputies and the Senate. "On April 20, 2001, one day after the resolution against Cuba was voted, in which Mexico abstained, our country's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Felipe Perez Roque, stated that Castañeda had done everything possible to change Mexico's position and have Cuba condemned. All throughout that year and into the next, Mr. Castañeda schemed and conspired to that end," Fidel said. President Fox, in spite of the fact that he visited Cuba shortly after his election and had seemingly cordial relations with President Castro (a visit later described by the Cuban President as being full of calculation and duplicity) has shown himself to be open to the manipulations of his foreign minister and Washington's policies against Cuba. In the recently publicized telephone conversation with the Cuban President, he maintained a facade of politeness while actively discouraging his visit, inviting him to lunch while attempting to censor his speech, requesting that the Cuban President not say anything offensive about the United States -- a country that maintains a four-decade-old economic war against Cuba. He then went on to instruct Mexico's representatives in Geneva to vote against Cuba, having previously promised he would do no such thing. President Fox did not honor the Cuban President's request to allow the President of the Cuban Parliament, Ricardo Alarcon, to represent him at all meetings and events for Heads of State, after Fidel's departure from Monterrey. Are these the actions of a gentleman? President Fidel Castro has decided to make public the truth -- and only the truth -- about what happened in Monterrey. He made public his conversation with President Fox with regret. but with the very obvious need to expose Castañeda for what he is: a tool in Washington's obsession about Cuba and her Revolution. Is Cuba's leader any less of a gentleman for exposing the truth in the midst of all the lies? ================================================================= 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 ================================================================= nytcari-04.24.02-05:06:56-23155