U.S. officials Monday cast a skeptical eye on an unsubstantiated report circulating in Miami that Cuba has biological weapons and missiles capable of delivering them from Key West to Jacksonville.
``The U.S. government follows the matter of weapons of mass destruction very closely, and we can assure you that we know of no reason to be alarmed,'' a State Department spokesman said.
The controversy erupted after a top Cuban military defector, Alvaro Prendez, went on Spanish-language radio stations in Miami on Monday to read a report he said he had received clandestinely from contacts on the island.
The report, which offered no hard evidence, alleged that the civilian-run Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Havana was a ``front'' for a military research center that manufactures anthrax and bubonic plague.
Prendez said the report also alleged that the biological weapons were to be delivered by five Soviet-made SS-22 missiles now deployed near the central city of Santa Clara.
U.S.: We're watchful
The report did not mention how Cuba got the missiles, Prendez said, but he and other recent defectors had heard rumors that they were shipped from Russia to Cuba as late as 1991.
U.S. missile experts said, however, that Cuba is not known to have any SS-22s and noted that such missiles are particularly watched by U.S. intelligence because they can deliver nuclear warheads up to 560 miles away.
Cuban President Fidel Castro appears to have set off the biological warfare speculation last week, when he compared the United States to a dragon and Cuba to a lamb and warned that if the dragon tried to eat the lamb, it would find its meal ``poisoned.''
Four U.S. experts on missiles and Cuba said Castro's highly advanced biotechnology industry can easily produce many types of toxins.
``We have no evidence, but it would not surprise me that they have this kind of capability. I would assume there would be a military component to any part of their research,'' said an expert on Cuba's armed forces.
Speculation disputed
``But the Cubans do not have any missiles with the range to hit Miami, never mind SS-22s,'' said a U.S. expert on missile forces.
Prendez told The Herald that he had no independent information confirming the report he received but felt he had to make it public because of the seriousness of the allegations.
Prendez is one of the highest-ranking Cuban military officers to defect from Cuba, a former air force pilot, hero of the Castro forces' victory in the Bay of Pigs, friend of Che Guevara and general until he was demoted for speaking out against the Cuban military's deployment in South Yemen.
He and another defector have said that in 1983, fearing that U.S. troops invading Grenada would also hit Cuba, Castro ordered them to plan a MiG raid on the nuclear power plant at Turkey Point.
Castro has repeatedly vowed over the past 37 years that if the United States dares to attack Cuba, his military and supporters are ready to wage a scorched-earth ``war of all the people.''
Copyright © 1997 The Miami Herald