U.N. Expert To Probe Cuban Charges On Mercenaries / Fox News

September 13, 1999

U.N. Expert To Probe Cuban Charges On Mercenaries

Fox News. 8.38 p.m. ET (043 GMT) September 12, 1999

HAVANA — A U.N. investigator specializing in the activities of mercenaries arrived in Havana Sunday to hear allegations by Cuba that it has been the target of attacks by mercenaries with backing from the United States.

Enrique Bernales Ballesteros, the U.N. Human Rights Commission's special rapporteur for mercenary activities, described his mission to the communist-ruled Caribbean island as "extremely delicate.''

He declined to give details, saying only that his task was to draw up an "objective, impartial and fair report'' that would serve the U.N.'s general goal of trying to guarantee respect for human rights by all the nations of the world.

Cuban officials said Bernales would be presented with evidence gathered by Cuba about past and recent terrorist and sabotage attacks against the island by foreign "mercenaries'' who Havana says have been supported from the United States.

This was expected to include details of a 1997 bombing campaign against Cuban hotels that killed an Italian visitor.

Earlier this year, two Salvadoran nationals were sentenced to death in Cuba after being found guilty of planting the bombs. Havana said they formed part of a terrorist network of Central American "mercenaries'' working for anti-communist Cuban exiles operating from the United States.

Cuba has also long cited the abortive 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion as a U.S.-backed mercenary attack.

All these incidents formed part of a $181 billion Cuban compensation claim presented against the U.S. government this summer in a Cuban court. This alleged that 40 years of U.S. hostility had killed or injured more than 5,000 Cubans.

Bernales, a Peruvian, was invited to visit by the Cuban government. But Havana has been selective about which U.N. special rapporteurs it allows onto the island.

For several years this decade, the Cuban leadership refused to permit a special rapporteur for Cuba appointed by the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Commission to visit to investigate alleged human rights violations by the government.

Havana said then it was being singled out by the commission for discriminatory treatment because of pressure from the U.S. government, a fierce critic of Havana's human rights record.

Cuba was censured by the Human Rights Commission in April for persecuting and jailing political dissidents. Havana calls these dissidents U.S.-backed "counterrevolutionaries'' and says they are prosecuted under the law.

comments@newsdigital.com

[ BACK TO THE NEWS ]