NewsMax.com
Thursday, Dec. 14, 2000
The presidents of Communist Cuba and ex-Communist Russia are conferring in Havana to resuscitate what was once a menacing Soviet-Cuban Cold War alliance.
The Associated Press reported that Castro and Putin were conversing animatedly through interpreters as they sped away in a Russian-built limousine after the Russian president landed at the Cuban capital late Wednesday.
This was no perfunctory social call. Nor was it entirely a mission aimed, as advertised, at breathing new life into a moribund economic relationship.
Significantly, the only top officials Russia's Valdimir Putin brought along with him from Moscow were Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev – neither of them known as economic heavy-lifters.
And prominent among those around Fidel Castro was Ricardo Alarcon, his point man on Cuba-United States affairs.
Back in Moscow, Putin's foreign policy aide, Sergei Prikhodko, said that for the trip to Cuba six documents had been prepared, including proposed agreements on cooperation in legal affairs and health.
In its report, the AP was stressing trade, not military or strategic affairs:
• Before the Soviet Union collapsed, it accounted for around one-fifth of Cuba's trade.
• And Cuba still owes Russia some $11 billion from the Soviet days.
• In 1991, the two countries were engaged in trade totaling $3.6 billion.
• Now it's down to about $1 billion a year.
• This prompted Putin to say last week that Russia must improve trade with Cuba or lose out to competitors.
• Putin let it be known that while in Cuba he wants to promote the completion of such Soviet-era projects as an oil refinery and a nickel plant.
But, as was very much the case during the Cold War, when Russia trades with Cuba there can follow a close military and strategic connection. Castro has demonstrated he is quite willing to give a trading partner in Moscow more than a strategic toe-hold in Uncle Sam's backyard.
Nor should it be any surprise that Cuban relations with the United States are high on the list of topics Putin, Castro and their top military and strategic officials will discuss this week before the Russian president travels on to Canada to visit another neighbor of the United States.
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20011108233645/http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2000/12/14/134251.shtml
NewsMax.com
Thursday, Dec. 14, 2000
The presidents of Communist Cuba and ex-Communist Russia are conferring in Havana to resuscitate what was once a menacing Soviet-Cuban Cold War alliance.
The Associated Press reported that Castro and Putin were conversing animatedly through interpreters as they sped away in a Russian-built limousine after the Russian president landed at the Cuban capital late Wednesday.
This was no perfunctory social call. Nor was it entirely a mission aimed, as advertised, at breathing new life into a moribund economic relationship.
Significantly, the only top officials Russia's Valdimir Putin brought along with him from Moscow were Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev – neither of them known as economic heavy-lifters.
And prominent among those around Fidel Castro was Ricardo Alarcon, his point man on Cuba-United States affairs.
Back in Moscow, Putin's foreign policy aide, Sergei Prikhodko, said that for the trip to Cuba six documents had been prepared, including proposed agreements on cooperation in legal affairs and health.
In its report, the AP was stressing trade, not military or strategic affairs:
• Before the Soviet Union collapsed, it accounted for around one-fifth of Cuba's trade.
• And Cuba still owes Russia some $11 billion from the Soviet days.
• In 1991, the two countries were engaged in trade totaling $3.6 billion.
• Now it's down to about $1 billion a year.
• This prompted Putin to say last week that Russia must improve trade with Cuba or lose out to competitors.
• Putin let it be known that while in Cuba he wants to promote the completion of such Soviet-era projects as an oil refinery and a nickel plant.
But, as was very much the case during the Cold War, when Russia trades with Cuba there can follow a close military and strategic connection. Castro has demonstrated he is quite willing to give a trading partner in Moscow more than a strategic toe-hold in Uncle Sam's backyard.
Nor should it be any surprise that Cuban relations with the United States are high on the list of topics Putin, Castro and their top military and strategic officials will discuss this week before the Russian president travels on to Canada to visit another neighbor of the United States.
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20011108233645/http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2000/12/14/134251.shtml
