Cuba & US..stupid tit for tat at embassies...

From the Miami Herald:

Posted on Tue, Jun. 13, 2006
DIPLOMACY
Cuba cuts power to U.S. mission
Cuba ramped up pressure on the U.S. diplomatic mission by cutting power and water.
By FRANCES ROBLES AND PABLO BACHELET
pbachelet@MiamiHerald.com

WASHINGTON - Cuba has cut off electricity to the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana, a dramatic escalation of a campaign of harassment of American diplomats that allegedly includes poisoning a family pet and shutting off water.

U.S. officials also confirmed Monday that the U.S. Interests Section has been destroying nonessential documents, but said that was routine at U.S. embassies when power supplies become uncertain.

The measures underlined the sharp tensions between the Bush administration and Cuba's communist government, but U.S. officials gave no indication whether they would retaliate against the Cuban Interests Section in Washington. The Cuban mission could not be reached for comment.
Cuba's harassments, U.S. officials said, also include holding back visas for American diplomats newly assigned to Havana; denying U.S. requests to import vehicles, computers and other supplies; preventing the mission from hiring Cuban workers to do maintenance, construction or other such work; restricting access to gasoline; and denying exit permits to Cuban employees who need to undergo training abroad.

''I would think the next step is for us to cut the water and power off to their mission,'' said Dennis Hays, who headed the State Department's Cuba desk and later worked for the Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation. ``I think we have to. The only thing to do is start kicking people out and shutting things down.''

Cuba's actions appear to have increased after the U.S. mission, on the seaside Malecón avenue, put up an electronic billboard in January that scrolled messages critical of the government.
In response, the government built a forest of flagpoles nearby to block the billboard. The billboard continues to operate several times a week.

Electricity to the U.S. Interests Section -- not quite an embassy because Cuba and the United States do not have formal diplomatic relations -- was cut off at 3 a.m. on June 5, Ashley Morris, a State Department spokeswoman, said.

U.S. officials believe the cutoff, first reported by El Nuevo Herald, was deliberate because, although electricity in Cuba is notoriously unreliable, no other buildings around the neighborhood have been affected.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Cuban officials have not responded to U.S. requests that power be restored. But the mission has been using emergency generators to continue normal operations.

Water supplies to the seven-story main U.S. building were cut off for three days last week, and for a month earlier this year, U.S. officials said. Water flow has slowed to a trickle in the annex where visa applications are processed. Interests Section personnel have also complained that phone service has suffered an unusually high number of dropped calls.

''The bullying tactics of the Castro regime aren't going to work,'' McCormack said.

''The interesting thing is that the regime's hostility has not been matched by that of the population at large,'' mission chief Michael Parmly told The Miami Herald. ``They are the ones whose opinions matter to us. And after all, what we are experiencing right now Cubans have known for decades. Think of them.''

Mission spokesman Drew G. Blakeney added: ''The regime's increasing resort to bullying tactics in dealing with [the mission] .T.T. and the Cuban people comes as no surprise: It has long sought to isolate and harass the Interests Section,'' he added.

Harassment of U.S. diplomats and operations in Havana is nothing new.

A new 800 number established to expedite visa applications at the U.S. mission in Havana was shut down June 2 after it was swamped with 500,000 calls, a 30-fold increase over the previous day. In December, U.S. officials said, a diplomat's dog was poisoned but survived.

Eric Watnik, a spokesman for the State Department's Western Hemisphere department, said the increase in calls to the 800 number was suspicious but that Washington had no proof that the Cuban government was behind the collapse.

A 2002 cable from the U.S. Interests Section obtained by The Miami Herald detailed a campaign of harassments that included human feces left at the homes of U.S. diplomats. The cable said alarms were set off in the middle of the night outside diplomats' homes to keep them and their families awake.

Phones would ring all night and ``cellphones ring every half hour for no apparent reason.''
U.S. diplomats who regularly met with Cuban dissidents were specially targeted, the cable added. Their car tires were slashed, windows smashed, insides ''pilfered'' and radios set to pro-Castro stations. Their homes sometimes were broken into, leaving doors and windows open and 'leaving not-so-subtle `messages' . . . including unwelcome calling cards like urine and feces.''

Washington broke diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1961, but the two countries opened Interests Sections in each other's capital in 1977, under President Carter. Both missions operate out of what were once the U.S. and Cuban embassies.

Former U.S. Interests Section chief Wayne Smith, now a critic of U.S. policy on Cuba, says that kind of campaign is triggered by provocations such as the U.S. mission's electronic billboard.
During Christmas 2004, the mission displayed a three-foot-high lighted sign showing the number 75 -- a reference to the 75 Cuban dissidents jailed in a harsh crackdown in 2003 -- along with holiday decorations. The Cuban government retaliated with a series of billboards, including one that depicted U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners.

Smith said cutting off the electricity was ''foolish'' because it plays into the hands of conservative Bush administration officials who he believes would like nothing more than to abandon the Havana post.

''If they are doing it for a short period of time, that's one thing,'' Smith said. ``If they cut off the water and electricity indefinitely, it goes on for several days, that's when you get into very serious stuff. That's when the United States will begin to think of withdrawing.''

Wrap...