Cuba's greatest service to humankind: Angola 25 Years Later

Cuba is rightly known for its many acts of humanitarian internationalism, exemplified by its  medical missions across the world.  However, Cuba’s greatest service to humankind has often been neglected.

Next week will be the 25^th anniversary of the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale – what a colleague of mine, Isaac Saney, has called “Africa’s Stalingrad” due to the fatal blow it dealt against South Africa's occupation of  Namibia and the apartheid system in South Africa.   Nelson Mandela stressed that the battle of Cuito Cuanvalae "was the turning point for the liberation of our continent—and of my people—from the scourge of apartheid."

From the eve of Angola’s independence in November 1975, South African forces, supported by the CIA,  assisted UNITA (Union for the Total Liberation of Angola) in its attempt to seize power from the revolutionary government of the MLPA (People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola) by carrying out numerous invasions, incursions and sabotages within Angolan territory.

Given the prospect of “losing” Angola, US Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger bluntly proposed that “We might wish to encourage the disintegration of Angola.”  Using Zaire’s (now Congo) dictator Mobutu as a channel for the aid, President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger approved Operation IA-FEATURE, which consisted of $40 million in funding and US military trainers which sought to support UNITA and other anti-MPLA groups.

Responding to the requests of the newly independent Angolan government in 1975, the first contingent of Cuban troops arrived on Angolan soil.  They would be the first of many.  In addition to the deployment of troops and military equipment, Cuban military advice was central in defeating the South Africans at Cuito Cuanavale.

Cuito Cuanavale was a small town in the southeast of Angola located on the Cuito River – but became the site of the most intense fighting during the war. The battle for Cuito Cuanavale lasted roughly six months and at the time was the largest battle on African soil since World War II.  The fighting took place on both the ground and in the sky, with Cuban pilots taking to the air in combat against the South African air force.  The stakes were so high for the South Africans that it has been revealed that the apartheid government was considering the use of nuclear weapons in an attack against Angola’s capital city of Luanda in order to prevent their own defeat.

Overall, the number of Cuban volunteers (including troops, educators and doctors) who served in Angola from 1975 to 1991 is officially estimated at over 300,000 – 2,000 of which whom lost their lives.

This is  the reason why Cuba was the first non-African country visited by Nelson Mandela following his release from prision in 1991.  Later at the 1995 Southern Africa Cuba Solidarity Conference, Mandela remarked that “Cubans came to our region as doctors, teachers, soldiers, agricultural experts, but never as colonizers.  They have shared the same trenches with us in the struggle against colonialism, underdevelopment, and apartheid.  Hundreds of Cubans have given their lives, literally, in a struggle that was, first and foremost, not theirs but ours. As Southern Africans we salute them. We vow never to forget this unparalleled example of selfless internationalism.”


This is my edited extract from a longer article by Kevin Edmonds for NACLA.

For more information please read Piero Glijeses' Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976

Family business: Cuban-Americans help to train Cuban entrepreneurs

I just came across something that I think ought to be more widely known, especially by those who do not believe that the economic changes under way in Cuba are not genuine. It is the existence of an initiative by Cuban-American businesspeople to help train young Cuban entrepreneurs in Cuba.


CubaEmprende, offers courses with the ultimate goal of enabling the emerging Cuban private sector and promoting an entrepreneurial culture in the island.

With the apparent blessing of the Cuban auhtorities, the courses are held in the Father Felix Varela Cultural Center, located in the historic centre of Old Havana . On the Cuban side the project is led by Jorge Mandilego and  its teachers have been specially trained by Cuban -American entrepreneurs . They are responsible for giving lectures , workshops and consulting to entrepreneurs interested in starting or improving a private business.
 
A young entrepreneur who recently completed the course, told the website Nuevodebatecuba that it was very instructive and included classes in marketing, business advertising, business psychology, sales techniques, organization and development, bank loans, and corporate social responsibility, such as improving customer service, among others issues.  
The course provides students/entrepreneurs with the necessary tools to carry their private business and address the conflicts generated under Cuban law , which still provide a framework very limited private sector development.

The achievement of the project has greatly contributed significant financial support , training and transfer of experiences of several Cuban-American businessmen like John Espinoza and John Mcintire Salazar , who has been the main collaborator and mentor.Also noteworthy is the contribution of Proempleo Mexican foundation , particularly Coordination Network Federal District by its director Zonana Smeke Yemi.
 
To a lesser extent also been interested in the project U.S. academic institutions , with the purpose of studying the socio economic and private sector development emerging . Also have had the support and recommendations of U.S. businessmen as Ricardo Herrero and John Hickey .
CubaEmprende is a necessary step in the reconciliation of Cuba with an important sector of exiles who are interested in investing in the country. It also shows that Cuban Americans can and should be involved in the process of change that is taking place on the island .
 

Leonardo Padura Fuentes: Havana’s man of mystery

Leonardo Padura

Public lecture by Dr Stephen Wilkinson, 

The International Institute for the Study of Cuba

Tuesday 26 November 2013.
6.30pm

Court Room, First Floor, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1H 7HU

On the occasion of the publication of The Contemporary Spanish American Novel by Bloomsbury, I am going to deliver a lecture on the life and work of Leonardo Padura Fuentes, currently Cuba’s most internationally successful author. In the talk,  I will examine how, in the early 1990s, Padura Fuentes renovated the Cuban detective genre and then discuss his more recent historical novels. The latest of these, The Man who Loved Dogs, which centres upon the murder of Trotsky, will shortly be published in English by Bitter Lemon Press. Padura Fuentes’ fiction presents a critical insider’s representation of socialist Cuba that challenges orthodox readings of the revolution and its history in the post-Soviet era.

To reserve a place please contact Olga Jímenez at ILAS: olga.jimenez@sas.ac.uk

Cuba and golf: Irony is lost on the yankees

Picture shows Che Guevara playing golf with Fidel Castro in 1959 at the Havana country club. The game was a publicity stunt staged after Fidel returned from his visit to the USA, where he had been snubbed by Eisenhower. Apparently, the US president said he was unable ot meet Castro because he had prior golf appointment. The picture, taken by the famous photographer Korda (who took the iconic portrait of Guevara), appeared in the newspaper Revolución under the heading: "Fidel and Che play golf better than Eisenhower." After the game, at Che's suggestion , the country club was chosen as the site for the architecturally astonishing Havana art schools and turned over to the education of the nation's youth.



When it comes to sports, there can surely be none that are less bourgeois than golf. After all it is the quintessential individualist enterprise - the only game in the world where you can actually play alone and still enjoy the challenge.

With its high prize-money, commercial paraphernalia and constant product innovation, there can surely be no sport less in tune with the socialist ideal. You would have thought that the opponents of Cuba's socialist government would be as anxious as anybody to have it return to the island where it once flourished before those beared revolutionaries took over in the 1960s and turned the bourgeoisie's happy golfing grounds into art schools and the like.
But no, the United States has actually done its darnedest to stop the game of Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus from making a comeback.
As the Miami Herald reports today, a Canadian real estate company planning a golf resort in the island has filed a $25.5million suit against the PGA of America in Palm Beach County, alleging that the group has blocked its right to use the valuable PGA brand on the island.
The firm, 360 Vox Corp., formerly Leisure Canada, claims it lost $20 million in anticipated profits, $5.5 million in feasibility studies, the $80,000 licensing fee it paid to the British-based PGA Ltd (PGAL), and other expenses.
Leisure Canada is one of 16 foreign companies that have eagerly rushed to propose golf and marina resorts in Cuba after the government announced that it wanted to expand the island’s tourist offerings. None has started construction to date.
The lawsuit alleges that PGA of America, which represents teaching professionals and is not linked to the PGA Tour, pushed PGAL to cancel the license because of criticism, including from the blog Capitol Hill Cubans.
On March 14, 2011, Leisure Canada announced it had signed the licensing agreement with PGAL, which has the right to the PGA brand in Cuba, for the future use of names such as PGA Village Cuba and PGA National Golf Academy Cuba.
But three days later the blog “suggested that PGAL was using its British brand to ‘skirt sanctions’ ” imposed on Cuba by the half-century-old U.S. trade embargo, according to the lawsuit.
The following day, PGA of America, by far the largest and most powerful member of PGAL, disavowed any role in the Cuba project and four months later met with PGAL officials to discuss the Cuba licensing issue, the lawsuit noted.
“Succumbing to pressure from the PGA of America … on Dec. 18, 2012, PGAL sent 360 Vox a letter stating that it was terminating the agreement and would no longer agree to work with 360 Vox in Cuba,” according to the lawsuit.
“PGA of America strong-armed the PGA in England, that’s what they did,” said Glen H. Waldman, the lawyer who filed the 360 Vox lawsuit on Sept. 9 in Palm Beach County Court. “They caved, and my client is out millions of dollars.”
Cuba unleashed a frantic wave of interest from foreign developers in 2010 when word began to leak that it was considering approving foreign investments in golf and marina resorts. The  island now has one 18-hole and one nine-hole course for the “bourgeoisie” sport.
But only four projects were reported in the summer of 2011 to be in the group that had finished negotiations with the government.
The Tourism Ministry has publicly mentioned final approval for only one of the four, The Carbonera Club, a $350 million project near Varadero beach east of Havana proposed by the British investment firm Esencia.
The three others were a Spanish project in Pinar del Rio province; a proposal in Holguin by Canada’s Standing Feather company; and a Bellomonte proposal by the British Coral Capital firm for a beach 15 miles east of Havana.
Bellomonte’s current standing is unclear because Coral Capital Executive Director Amado Fakhre and Chief of Operations Stephen Purvis were freed from a Cuban prison in June after two years under investigation for corruption.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/09/15/3629543/canadian-golf-project-in-cuba.html#storylink=cpy

Cuba's amazing art on show

The director of Havana’s Wifredo Lam Centre has brought the work of 15 contemporary Cuban artists to Boston, Massachussetts, USA. I am so excited about these works that I have just lifted this article straight from its source at Cuban Art News. I am sure they won't mind... enjoy!

Tony Labat, Dialectic IV, 1978-2003
Courtesy Gallery Paule
Anglim and School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Last year he curated the 11th Havana Biennial. This spring, he curated the Cuban Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale. Now Jorge Fernández Torres, director of the Centro de arte contemporáneo Wifredo Lam, has curated a show of contemporary Cuban art for the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA), Boston. Dilated Biography: Contemporary Cuban Narratives features the work of 15 artists across several generations: Alexandre Arrechea, Javier Castro, Felipe Dulzaides, Juan Roberto Diago Durruthy, Luis Gárciga, Luis Gómez, Tony Labat, Dennis Izquierdo, Susana Pilar Delahante Matienzo, Reynier Leyva Novo, Tatiana Mesa Pajan, Eduardo Ponjuan, Wilfredo Prieto, Diana Fonseca Quinones and Grethell Rasúa.
“The relationship began through the artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons, who is a faculty member here,” explained SMFA communications officer Brooke Daniels. “Jorge curated Magda’s work in the 11th Havana Biennale and also included her work in the Cuba Pavilion at Venice. Jorge was a visiting artist lecturer at SMFA in October 2011. Dilated Biography came about through a series of conversations between Jorge, SMFA curator Joanna Soltan, Magda, and SMFA president Christopher Bratton.” (Campos-Pons has two exhibitions herself this season, one at Tufts University and the other at the Stephan Stoyanov Gallery in Lower Manhattan.)
Here are excerpts from the curatorial statement by Fernández Torres, including comments on several works in the show.
"Since its beginnings, Cuba has been the result of the journeys, and of that great combination of displaced cultures that created the criollo, an idea which grew into a sense of national identity which in turn led to a variety of texts that attempted to address and understand that identity. The transformations that have occurred have different stories behind them. Cuba was, is and always will be a trans-territorial space of mutations, identities and expansions.
The Cuban Revolution was undoubtedly a universal event. However, a change of this nature—one that survived the end of the Cold War and the fall the Soviet Union—also led to polarized domestic relations and large waves of emigration. What remains is an archaeology of memories that opens the way to the power of cultural and familial identification, allowing us to reconsider Cuba in all its complexity.
The exhibition “Biografía dilatada (Dilated Biography)” represents the coexistence of different memories. It is not limited to a region or age group, nor does it emphasize any particular style or method. The only discernible common factor lies in the individual poetics. It is from there that the ideas are expressed, and it becomes an exploration of life. Its ideas are metaphorical, based on life experiences that create personal stories.
The stories behind the pieces in this exhibition are diverse. Some were created recently, while others are several years old and have already participated in numerous exhibitions, something taken into consideration during this exhibition's planning. We designed the exhibition having in mind that the message of each piece always remains intact, and that it cannot be undone or diluted with time. Our purpose here is to create new meanings and look for the infinite number of meanings to activate the idea as a visual resource. We do not aim to include large, grand works, but rather sensitize the space with smaller gestures that remind us of the aphorisms of Nietzche and pre-Socratic philosophers.

Wilfredo Prieto, Politicamente Correcto, 2009
Courtesy Wilfredo Prieto and School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

 
Wilfredo Prieto, by cutting a watermelon into a square—emphasizing its redness and converting the green skin into a small support on the ground—gives us Políticamente correcto (Politically Correct), which casts doubt and irony on the artist’s ideology and behavior where it matters. With the free and radical nature of that gesture, Prieto questions the changes of ideas in art and politics as part of the same fiction.

Diana Fonseca Quinones, Mundo Pacifico, 2013
Courtesy School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

 
Diana Fonseca Quinones has artfully crafted a globe where the land has disappeared, leaving the sea to cover its entire surface. The artist has us return to the very origin of life as a possible metaphorical path to reinterpret the world. Diana seeks refuge in an individual experience of peacefulness and contemplation, aiming to empty the planet of that increasing air of violence in a climax that completely surrounds us.

Denis Izquierdo, Paranoia, 2011
Courtesy Denis Izquierdo and School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The actions of resistance, the national narratives and those that inspire interventionist tendencies have been marked by military strategies. Denis Izquierdo creates an interactive piece in the form of a sea urchin which he incorporates into the Aldouin system. The artist turns the missiles into tactile material, where in spite of the hedonism of their aesthetic repurposing, he succeeds in activating the paranoia produced in both those who defend themselves and those who attack. An interesting dynamic also emerges between the prohibitions and our ability to carry out our actions.

Reinier Leyva Novo, 9 gramos que debieron cambiar el mundo / 9 Grams That Should Have Changed the World, 2013
Courtesy Reinier Leyva Novo and School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

At the end of this section, we have Reinier Leyva Novo’s Nueve gramos que pudieron cambiar el mundo (Nine Grams That Got to Change the World). The coded messages between Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis—known in Cuba as The October Crisis—were recently published in Granma, the official newspaper of the Cuban Government. The artist cut out the news clippings and placed them on a scale to reveal the weight of these cut-out strips: nine grams. Novo reduces the event’s turbulence to a concise attitude that marks the tension of a text that has become a simple record; the passions of personal language in the face of universal fates.

Eduardo Ponjuán, Pararrayo (Lightning Rod), 2007
Courtesy School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

In the center of the exhibition space, we have Eduardo Ponjuán’s Pararrayo (Lightning Rod) standing like a totem pole. The work's height is the same as Fidel Castro’s, and consists of stacked Cuban one peso coins culminating in three sharp-pointed structures that make up the helm of a typical lightning rod. During its production, this piece had to endure the test of sea water saltpeter. Pararrayo addresses the utopias and anathemas of a country that has projected its own light and darkness with equal force.

Alexandre Arrechea, White Corner, 2006
Courtesy School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

This first section of the exhibition closes with White Corner, by Alexandre Arrechea. In this work, the artist . . . becomes the ‘Other’ of his work. There is a double projection that adds tension to the meeting of Arrechea’s two images, where the individual exploration becomes a place of confrontation for different issues unresolved throughout our history.

Tony Labat, Hairball (Pendejo), 2013
Courtesy Gallery Paule Anglim and School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

A second part of the exhibition can be found at the Grossman Gallery. It opens with Hair Ball and closes with Dialectic, both by Tony Labat, an artist whose lifetime body of work can be understood as a single piece. Inidividually and as a group, the pieces share the same content. Like Foucault, he questions the forms on which the moral standards that sustain power are established. His work examines the deconstruction and ironic beautification of the scatological and factual elements that have validated the utopias developed in Cuba throughout the last fifty years, both philosophically and ideologically.

Grethell Rasúa, Con tu propio sabor (With Your Own Flavor), 2005-06
Courtesy Grethell Rasúa and School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Next, we have Con su propio sabor (With Your Own Taste) by Grethell Rasúa, a video-documentation focused on the essence of human nature. She uses work by Hans Hacke as a starting point to explore how biological organisms self-generate and what that implies; a resource used to investigate relations that delve into a sort of collective body art where the receiver is both object and subject of the piece. The process overlaps with the object.

Luis Gárciga, video still from Destinos Posibles, 2009
Courtesy School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The last video is Destinos Posibles (Possible Destinations) by Luis Gárciga. During a contemporary art exhibition in Cuba, Gárciga took on the personality of a local cab driver. He replaced the monetary transaction with the need to create a complicit relationship with his passengers. He accepted the obsessions, issues and frustrations of people who for the most part were very open during the journey. The authenticity of the ethics of daily life allows us to feel the true aspirations of the video’s protagonists."
 
Dilated Biography: Contemporary Cuban Narratives continues at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston until October 19.

The Brazilians are coming...

As Brazil is about to import 4,000 Cuban doctors to ease its shortage of medical professionals, it has been annunced that Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff (pictured beklow with Raúl Castro) is expected to visit Cuba at the end of this year to attend the official opening of the Port of Mariel which is being built by Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht. 
The first 700 metres of new berths at the port, situated about 35 miles West of Havana, are scheduled to be completed by December and the port is expected to be fully operational by next year. 
The visit will be the second by President Rousseff to Cuba in two years and is a sign of deepening relations. 
Brazil’s national development bank BNDES is financing 85% of the port project, including the creation of the adjacent Mariel development zone, with Cuba funding the remaining 15%. Almost all the supplies and services for the project are being provided by Brazilian companies. 
The new Mariel Port will include facilities for offshore oil exploration and development, a container terminal with the capacity to store up to one million containers, along with general cargo, bulk and refrigerated handling facilities. 
The Mariel terminal will provide access for large vessels of up to 15 metres draft, which cannot currently dock in Cuba. Mariel’s new facilities will be operated by the Port Authority of Singapore’s PSA Panama International, which is based in Panama City. 
The special development zone will be operated by a subsidiary of GAESA, the Cuban military holding company and aims to encourage more foreign investors to produce high value-added goods and services for export in Cuba. 

It is expected that beyond the industrial zone an area of residential property, hotels and other facilities are envisaged. The zone is covered by special laws and has a tax status that is different from that on national territory. 
The government published a decree on 3 April 2013 detailing rules for the “maquiladoras”, the manufacturing plants in the free-trade zone that will import and assemble duty-free components for export. The decree establishes rules for the area and its operations, including customs fees, tax exemptions and exemptions from the payment of import taxes. Brazil indicated last year that it would be helping Cuba draw up a legal framework for special development zones.
“We have a lot of interest in cooperating in the definition of this model, in order to bring in the biggest possible number of Brazilian companies,” Brazil’s Foreign Trade Minister Fernando Pimentel said last year. Havana has said that it is interested in “more integration” between Cuban and Brazilian companies and is offering “technology transfer in exchange for investment in plants”. 
The São Paulo-based glassmaker Fanavid has already indicated that it will open a manufacturing facility special development zone to supply Cuba, Brazil and the Caribbean region with architectural glass. Brazilian bus manufacturer Marcopolo could also be interested in opening a manufacturing plant in the zone, which lies 49km west of Havana, Cuban officials say. Marcopolo is the third-largest bus maker in the world. 
BNDES has lent Cuba over US$40m since 1999 to buy buses and cars. Cuba secured a rotating credit facility of US$400m to Cuba last year for food purchases, as well as a US$200m loan from Brazil to fund Mais Alimentos Cuba, a food production programme to enable private farmers in Cuba to buy Brazilian-made tractors and other equipment, and benefit from Brazilian training and technology transfer. Brazil’s agriculture research institute Embrapa is also cooperating with Cuba on a number of projects, including one on soy and corn production, one to diversify sugar production, one on development and know-how transfer in biological pest control, and one on reducing heavy metals in agricultural products. 
All the projects are funded by Brazil’s foreign-aid agency Agência Brasileira de Cooperação. Odebrecht, meanwhile, formed a joint production agreement last year with state company AZCUBA to operate a sugar mill in the province of Cienfuegos. Airport upgrades are also being carried out by Odebrecht and other Brazilian companies. BNDES agreed in May 2013 to provide US$176m for five airport modernisation projects in Cuba. 
Brazil has also indicated that it is studying potential investments in generic pharmaceuticals, including anti-cancer drugs, petroleum refining, and the production of lubricants, while Cuban officials have said that Brazil and Cuba are studying projects in the areas of health care, education, computers and agriculture and livestock.

From a hawk to a dove: Another Cuba envoy sees the light

It is a curious fact that once they retire from active duty, US diplomats that have served in the US Interests Section in Havana, turn into advocates of an improvement in relations with Havana. Latest to add his voice to the chorus of former envoys is Michael Parmly who, Reuters reports, is now saying that the US should give Guantanamo Bay back to Cuba.

Obama, by negotiating a deal, could build a long-term relationship with its people, Reuters quotes Parmly as saying.

Parmly,(pictured right) was head of the U.S. interests section in Havana from 2005-2008 at a time when relaitons between the two countries were at their worst since the end of the Cold War.

But now he has changed his tune and has written a 26-page paper soon to appear in the Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, published by the Fletcher School in Massachusetts.

According to Parmly, the U.S. base is a "historic anomaly" even though the two countries have not had diplomatic relations since 1961.

"The current partisan tensions on the (Capitol) Hill ensure that it would be an uphill climb, but it is the thesis of this paper that a similar bold step, akin to the Panama Canal, is called for regarding Guantanamo," he said, citing that 1977 U.S. return of the waterway to Panama as a precedent.

"Both sides would have an interest."

Since 1903, the United States has had treaty rights to Guantanamo Bay, a 45 square-mile territory in southeastern Cuba, originally needed as a fuelling station for U.S. warships.

A prison at Guantanamo was set up by former U.S. President George W. Bush's administration for foreign suspected militants after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Obama has pledged to close the prison which has held dozens of suspected militants, most without charge, for more than a decade. But he has faced congressional resistance.

Parmly, who now lives in Geneva, says the U.S. and Cuban governments could agree that 46 "problem cases" remain at a U.S.-run jail even after operational control of the base is transferred. The remaining 118 inmates could be sent to U.S. prisons and then face trial or be released.

An agreement could also be reached with Cuba allowing the U.S. Navy to use the base for its operations in the Caribbean, he said. The U.S. centre at Guantanamo for processing Cuban and Haitian migrants picked up at sea could be kept or transferred, said.

"Guantanamo Bay Naval Base is not U.S. territory. Cuba is the ultimate owner," Parmly says.

Cuba calls for peace in Middle East

 

Cartoon courtesy of The Daily Mirror

Statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

THE Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba has learned of, with profound concern, the statement made on August 31 by Barack Obama, President of the United States, in which he announced his decision to launch a military action against the Syrian Arab Republic.

Without leaving any margin whatsoever for attempts underway to reach a political solution to the conflict, or presenting any kind of evidence, and with total disrespect for the opinions of many countries – including some of his principal allies – and the United Nations, the President of the United States has announced his intention to engage in actions in violation of international law and the UN Charter. These will inevitably provoke more death and destruction and will unavoidably lead to an intensification of the existing conflict in this Arab nation.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba calls on members of the UN Security Council to fulfill their mandate to prevent any rupture of the peace and to stop a military intervention which threatens international security in this volatile region of the world.

In the view of Cuba, the General Assembly, the sole United Nations body in which all countries are represented, likewise has a responsibility to halt the aggression, and particularly so when it is foreseeable that the Security Council, given the preeminence of the United States on this Council, will be unable to make a decision. In the exercise of its authority, the General Assembly must urgently meet and take essentially needed measures.

The UN Secretary General must directly involve himself in preventing actions which the President of the United States has presented as virtually inevitable. It is his responsibility to make diplomatic, urgent and vigorous gestures to the U.S. government in order to try and save the immense responsibility of his position in relation to peace and world stability.

The Group of 20 is to meet in Saint Petersburg, Russia, September 5-6. This meeting, in which many of the principal world leaders will be participating, cannot evade its obligation to discuss the situation created with the President of the United States and adopt concrete action in this context.

If the truth were not hidden from them and they were not constantly inundated with tendentious, manipulated and incomplete information, the American people who, in successive wars from Vietnam to date, have had to suffer the death of tens and thousands of their young people, would not remain indifferent to a new conflagration which would produce more loss of life and, when the moment comes, would demand that corrupt politicians and the lying press act with responsibility.

The question arises as to what the United States Congress will do when it opens its sessions next September 9 and must choose between the initiation of another war or the preservation of world peace, between life or death. If, as the British Parliament has done, members reject the attempts at aggression announced by the President, it will have made a surprising and valuable contribution to world peace and questioned the political system of the country. If it approves such actions, it must assume the consequences before the implacable records of history.

Cuba also calls on leaders of world opinion in the United States and the world to prevent the law of the jungle prevailing over good sense, in relation to illegal and illegitimate attacks being launched against other countries and diplomacy being supplanted by war.

At the same time, Cuba urges peace and religious leaders, youth and students, workers, artists and academics, social movements, progressive forces and all those who reject war, to mobilize in opposition to the decision made by the President of the United States to attack the Arab nation.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also calls for the preservation of Syria’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity and the right to self-determination of its people, and the promotion of a solution to the conflict via diplomatic routes, without further bloodshed.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba.

Havana, September 1, 2013.