Belize rejects US requests for Radio Marti Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - Barry Stoller AFP - 13 June 2002 Belize rejects US requests for Radio Marti broadcasts to Cuba WASHINGTON -- The government of Belize has rejected repeated high-level US requests for permission to broadcast radio programming to Cuba from its territory, a US official said Thursday. Radio Marti, a US-funded operation, had sought to broadcast from transmitters in Belize that now airs Voice of America (VOA) programming, the official said. "It was asked at the highest levels and it was declined," said Tish King, a spokeswoman for Washington's International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) which oversees both VOA and Radio Marti. "They said no, flat out, several times," she said of the response from Belize, adding that there were no current plans to renew the request. "We are no longer pursuing it," King said. Cuban authorities have jammed Radio Marti broadcasts since the service began in 1985 and in a bid to get around the interference, the IBB wanted to add Radio Marti programming to VOA transmitters located near the southern Belizean town of Punta Gorda, she said. "The Cubans are jamming the transmissions and this was an effort to pursue another transmission method in order to overcome it," King said. She declined to comment onthe reasons for the rejection of the requests from Belize, which, under the terms of its agreement to host the VOA relay stations, must be consulted on changes to the transmitters' use. However, the Miami Herald reported this week that Belize turned the IBB down because officials there felt the country had too much to lose by allowing the broadcasts. "We do not want to get involved," the newspaper quoted Vaughan Gill, a spokesperson for the Belize government, as saying. "Belize has good relations with both Cuba and the United States." Belize hosts an increasing number of Cuban physicians and nurses working in remote villages and more than 100 Belizean students are in Cuba on full scholarships, some of them studying medicine, he told the paper. Belize feared that allowing the Radio Marti broadcasts might prompt Cuban officials to withdraw the doctors or expel some or all of the medical students, the Herald said. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller Subscribe: che-list-subscribe@yahoogroups.com ================================================================= 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 ================================================================= nytact-06.15.02-18:23:58-7929