by the El Reportero news services
Fidel Castro
Havana – An ailing Fidel Castro cast his ballot in private on Sunday in Cuba’s municipal elections, which he said were a rejection of United States pressures for political change in the communist state.
Castro, who has not appeared in public for 15 months, summoned an electoral official to his convalescence quarters to vote in the first elections since he turned over power to his brother Raul last year.
“The commander in chief expressed his confidence in the massive and enthusiastic turnout of our people in these elections that are an outright rejection of (US President George) Bush’s threats,” government-run media reported.
“Bush is obsessed with Cuba,” Castro said in a statement read out on state television. He criticised the war in Iraq and the torture of detainees at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Preparing the ground for a slimmer, redirected Plan Colombia
President Alvaro Uribe’s plea to the US Congress to maintain the aid it has been providing for his anti-drugs and counter-insurgency campaigns seems highly unlikely to be heeded.
The US ambassador in Colombia is already predicting figures as much as a third lower than the Bush administration’s request, and has announced that aspects of Plan Colombia will start to be handed over to the Colombian government. Military training has already been reduced by a quarter in 2006.
Colombian defense minister slams Chávez
On 18 October Colombia’s defence minister, Juan Manuel Santos, said that the possible prisoner swap between his government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) was a “godsend” for Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez.
Santos almost certainly said what the Colombian government and the US believes in secret. However, the official line of both governments is that they want Chávez to do everything he can to secure the prisoner swap, especially because many Colombians and many Latin American leaders believe that Chávez is the one person who could make such a deal possible.
Narrow win still leaves Cafta-DR implementation into doubt
Costa Rica’s implementation of the free trade agreement between Central America, the Dominican Republic and the US (Cafta-DR) remains in doubt despite the victory of those supporting the deal in a popular referendum on 7 October.
Indeed, even though the referendum has ratified the Cafta-DR without the need of further legislative action, congress still has to approve 13 measures that are required to adjust Costa Rican law to what was promised during the treaty’s negotiations.
Crucially, opponents of the agreement may be able to delay the approval of these measures until after March next year – when the CAFTA-DR implementation deadline expires.
