BY MARTÍN KOPPEL

HAVANA, Cuba - The fight to oppose Washington's economic war against Cuba "is an issue of interest to workers, intellectuals, and farmers in the United States," stated Ricardo Alarcón, president of Cuba's National Assembly.

The reason, he said, is that "no society can be free as long as it oppresses another. Any society based on injustice against another, on attempting to colonize another, will face this as its main problem. The effort to end the injustice imposed by their country on another must become a vital priority for the workers, intellectuals, and decent people of that country because this is a prerequisite to achieve their own freedom."

Alarcón was addressing the opening session of the Eighth U.S.-Cuba Philosophy and Social Science Conference. The week-long event, held at the University of Havana, began here June 10. It brought together 84 participants from Cuba and 45 from the United States and a few other countries.

Alarcón, who is also a member of the Communist Party of Cuba's Political Bureau, devoted most of his remarks to the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act of 1996, commonly known as the Helms-Burton law. The measure tightens the 36-year-long U.S. economic embargo on the Caribbean nation. Among other punitive measures, it allows U.S. businessmen whose property was confiscated by Cuban workers and peasants after the 1959 revolution to sue companies abroad that invest in those properties.

The Cuban leader noted that a week earlier the Organization of American States had adopted a resolution widely interpreted as critical of the Libertad Act. Emphasizing that the OAS had "never before in its history made such a decision criticizing U.S. policy," he said U.S. officials had replied that "this was a U.S. law and they would continue to apply it regardless of the OAS or international opinion. This is a norm of conduct for the empire.... They have acted like this toward Cuba for more than 35 years."

Alarcón challenged the claim in the big-business media that the adoption of the Helms-Burton law was caused by the Cuban government's shootdown of two hostile U.S. planes violating the island's airspace on February 24. "The media insists that, had it not been for that incident, the president would have vetoed the law," he said. "But no one can quote a single statement [by Clinton] ever indicating his opposition to the bill."

The White House simply used the shootdown as a pretext to sign a measure it basically supported, Alarcón said. In fact, he pointed out, the Clinton administration "had already arranged a deal in the U.S. Congress as early as December 1995, well before the plane incident."

U.S. lies about `civilian planes'
Alarcón meticulously dismantled the lie peddled by the U.S. government and major media that Cuba had shot down "civilian planes" in international airspace and killed innocent civilians.

The Cessna 337 planes flown by Brothers to the Rescue, a right-wing Cuban-American outfit, were not civilian aircraft. Anyone checking a well-known aviation reference book like Jane's All the World's Aircraft would see that the Cessna 337 "was created and conceived for military missions," said Alarcón, showing the audience a copy of the handbook opened to the appropriate pages. He pointed out that Washington had used such aircraft in its war against Vietnam and later in its military intervention against the revolutionary movement in El Salvador.

Another revealing fact was the efforts by Florida congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in the early 1990s to get some of these leftover military planes for Brothers to the Rescue. Alarcón showed a copy of the July 19, 1992, issue of the Miami Herald with an article by David Lawrence, the paper's publisher, who had been invited to fly with Brothers to the Rescue chief José Basulto. The accompanying photo in the paper depicted the Cessna plane.

"You can see four letters above the number of the airplane along with the Brothers to the Rescue logo, USAF, which stands for the United States Air Force.

"So apparently Ms. Ros was successful" in securing the military planes, Alarcón remarked. Brothers to the Rescue "was acting with impunity. They didn't even bother to erase those letters that identified them as U.S. Air Force airplanes."

Brothers to the Rescue was so brazen about its violations of Cuban airspace that they published a bulletin with photos documenting their provocations. Alarcón showed one issue of the bulletin with a picture of a July 1995 flight that, according to the description, had actually flown over the University of Havana.

After Clinton used the plane incident as an excuse to sign the Libertad Act in March, what happened? Alarcón asked. What did the U.S. media report?

Washington had initially gone to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to try to ram through a quick statement accusing Havana of shooting down civilian aircraft in international waters. That effort failed and the agency decided at a March 7 meeting in Montreal to launch an investigation of the incident.

Alarcón referred to a provisional, unpublished report by the ICAO investigating commission, which stated that the Cuban government had fully met the commission's requests for information and that, by the end of April, the U.S. government had failed to provide crucial information, including data from U.S. radar in Florida on February 24. Even after a one-month extension to early June, the missing information is still not forthcoming from Washington.

Facts `not fit to print' in `Times'
More recently, the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) suspended Basultós pilot license, an acknowledgment of Cuba's assertion that Brothers to the Rescue had violated Cuban airspace. The FAA cited violations from July 13, 1995, to February 24 of this year, Alarcón said.

The Cuban leader pointed out that the New York Times barely devoted a few lines on an inside page to the suspension of Basultós license, although this move represented a damning admission that Washington had lied about the February 24 events. Apparently, Alarcón remarked, this news "was not fit to print" in such a major liberal daily.

Likewise, the president of Cuba's National Assembly underlined, no major U.S. capitalist paper has published the full text of the Helms-Burton law for the U.S. public to study.

In contrast, the Cuban press has published and distributed the complete text of the legislation. Over the last several weeks, Cuban workers have organized discussions on the measure in every factory and other workplaces throughout the island.

"This is what democracy is all about," Alarcón stressed. He added that the Cuban government has taken a similar approach toward every major measure taken to deal with the country's severe economic crisis. "A government must be not only for the people but by the people," he stated.

Alarcón explained that in the United States, the government has not only launched attacks on social gains like medical care for retirees, but hasn't even pretended to consult working people about such measures.

"Here, no action the government takes has been done with massive involvement by the people," he said. "Thousands of meetings have been held, involving the entire people."

Alarcón addressed the audience on the irreplaceable role of those in the United States who are fighting Washington's attacks on the Cuban revolution like the Helms-Burton law.

"This requires a special effort that must begin by promoting greater awareness within the United States that the illegal policy against Cuba and the U.S. blockade of Cuba are important questions for U.S. society," he said. As long as Washington is able to carry out such attacks, "the people in the United States will never live in peace."  
 
 
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