MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Cuba the next objective

President George Bush is committed to the disappearance of the current regime in Cuba and will maintain the economic embargo as a “tool” to ensure this objective.

Speaking in a seminar on Cuban Affairs in Miami University, Interamerican Affairs Deputy Secretary of State Roger Noriega said that "the President is determined to see the end of the Castro regime and the dismantling of the apparatus that has kept him in office for so long".

Mr. Noriega said that President Bush is committed to working with the international community to ensure that democracy finally arrives in Cuba and "Cubans can put an end to the communist dictatorship".

"We would like to see more Latinamerican countries talk for democracy in Cuba and against repression in the island".

Mr. Noriega indicated that the economic embargo, (establishes in 1961) has impeded Castro from exporting the revolution to the rest of Latinamerica, and this has also forced "the dictator to implement economic reform".

"This is an effective tool of our policy and we're not going to give it up. This will ensure that the dictatorship that is coming to an end will see the Cubans and not Castro's friends take the lead in Cuba".

Mr. Noriega also came out strongly against tourism to Cuba, "the billion dollars from American tourists will be saved for Cubans living in freedom and nor for their current jailers".

Following the conference during a press conference Mr. Noriega underlined that the Bush administration would veto any legislative decision to lift or make sanctions to Cuba more flexible.

The US Congress is expected to discuss the issue in the coming weeks.

Meantime in New York a controversy among owners and staff of the city's oldest Spanish language newspaper, El Diario-La Prensa, which finally refused to publish extracts of a column supposedly written by Fidel Castro attracted the attention of The Daily News that offered an English version.

In the extracts Mr. Castro states that Cuba "leads the world in education" and that the name of Cuba will endure in history because of its contributions to education, culture and health "during one of the most difficult periods in humanity's history".

"Blocked by the only superpower, semi-blocked by Europe, the Cuban revolution has not been defeated", writes Castro who has been in power since 1959.

The Daily News said it decided to publish Mr. Castro's column given the controversy surrounding the issue.