Exile leader asks U.S. to sever ties with `anti-Castro industry'

Published Tuesday, November 11, 1997, in the Miami Herald

Exile leader asks U.S. to sever ties with `anti-Castro industry'

Special to The Herald

Cuban activist Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, leader of the Miami-based group Cambio Cubano, delivered a letter to participants in the Ibero-American Summit Conference asking them to press Washington to put an end to ``the anti-Castro industry.''

The meeting was held last weekend on Venezuela's Margarita Island. Cambio Cubano advocates dialogue toward a democratic change in Cuba.

Alluding to hard-line Cuban exiles, Gutierrez Menoyo wrote that the United States ``should realize that the time has come to end its conspiracy with elements . . . that profit from a lucrative business: the anti-Castro industry.''

``Opposition factors linked to certain circles in Washington'' are to blame for thwarting an improvement in relations with Havana ``by reviving old stances and formulas of confrontation in the guise of peaceful means,'' Gutierrez Menoyo wrote.

The ``peaceful means,'' he said, were the steps taken by Washington to support opposition groups on the island ``as part of a strategy of confrontation.''

The United States' policy toward Cuba ``is a relic of the Cold War, a disease for which Ibero-American countries should help find a remedy,'' he said.