A consecuencia del hecho de que autoridades
panameñas ha retenido en Colón, en la costa del Caribe, un barco de bandera
norcoreana con un cargamento de azúcar procedente de Cuba en el que encontraron
material bélico, El Cuba Transition Project ha divulgado de nuevo un material
dado a conocer en 2004, sobre los vínculos militares entre La Habana, Pyongyang y Pekín.
A continuación el
texto del informe:
In light of the seizure by Panama of a
North Korean-flagged ship that had set sail from Cuba in July carrying military
cargo and what appears as ballistic missiles, we are reproducing a report we
published in 2004 highlighting the growing military cooperation between Cuba
and North Korea. Hugh Griffiths, an arms trafficking expert at the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute, said that the institute earlier this
year reported to the U.N. a discovery it made of a suspicious flight from Cuba
to North Korea that travelled via central Africa.
In the 2004 ICCAS report, we urged U.S.
policy makers to focus on the Cuban-North Korean link.
_________________________________________________
Focus on Cuba, Issue 61
December 20, 2004
Staff Report
The Cuban-North Korean Connection
The recent, unprecedented mobilization of
the Cuban military has little to do with an imminent U.S. invasion. The reason
the Castro regime is spending an estimated US$1.2 billion a year of Cuba's
scarce resources on its armed forces (1) has to do with reasserting the
dominant institutional role of the military in Cuba's totalitarian society,
instilling anti-American sentiments in the Cuban people, and assuring an
orderly succession after Fidel Castro's death under the martial rule of Defense
Minister Raúl Castro.
However, what may be of genuine concern
for Cuba's neighbors is Castro’s new campaign to upgrade his armed forces'
capabilities and reach. With the Cuban military involved in virtually every
sector of the Cuban economy and managing the island’s lucrative US$2 billion a
year tourism industry (2), Defense Minister Raúl Castro certainly has the means
at his disposal to pursue his big brother’s rearmament ambitions.
That Cuba is seeking to rearm has not
been kept a state secret. In September, Gen. Leopoldo Cintra Frías, head of
Cuba’s Western Army and directly responsible for protecting the senior
leadership in Havana, journeyed to Beijing to confer with Chinese Defense
Minister Cao Gangchuan. On the top of the Cuban general’s agenda was “further
cooperation between the Chinese and Cuban armies under the fast-changing
international situation.” More to the point, Cintra Frías laid on the table the
Cuban military’s “needs” to “[modernize]…as soon as possible.” (3)
With the island’s tourism earnings in the
hands of Cuba’s Defense Ministry and Havana’s urgency to rearm, the question
remains, what is Castro seeking to acquire? Beyond spare parts to keep a few
dozen operational MiG jets flying and aging tanks and armed vehicles running
(4), one disturbing possibility arises from the findings of U.S. inspectors
during their search for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq. In October
2003, Dr. David Kay, then leading the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s WMD
investigations in Iraq, disclosed on the ABC News program This Week that his
team had found evidence of “North Korean missiles going to Cuba.”(5)
Although it may seem irrational for the
Cuban government to incite a crisis with Washington by importing North Korean
Scuds capable of hitting targets within the continental United States (6), the
precedent of the October 1962 missile crisis -- when Castro beseeched Soviet
premier Nikita Khrushchev to use the island as a launch pad for a preemptive
nuclear strike against the U.S. (7) -- cannot be forgotten. Moreover, neither
Kim Jong Il nor Fidel Castro is averse to the politics of brinkmanship.
Recent visits to Cuba by high-ranking
emissaries of Kim Jong Il should be enough to warrant a further inquiry into
Kay’s remarks. In June, North Korea’s vice minister of foreign affairs, Choi Su
Hon, traveled to Havana to “strengthen bilateral relations.” As reported by
Cuba’s state-run press, the North Korean minister arrived in the island with
instructions from Kim Jong Il to “develop mutual ties in various spheres.”(8)
And in late November, Vice Marshal Kim Yong Chun, chief of staff of the Korean
People’s Army, led a delegation of senior generals that spent five days
evaluating Cuba’s military infrastructure. While the weather in November may be
more agreeable in Havana than Pyongyang, it is doubtful that the North Korean
delegation was on vacation. In addition to meeting with Defense Minister Raúl
Castro and the heads of all branches of Cuba’s military establishment, Vice
Marshal Kim Yong Chun and his staff toured manufacturing and assembly
facilities of the Unión de Industrias Militares, the island’s defense industry
conglomerate. (9)
Culminating his visit, Vice Marshal Kim
met with Fidel Castro to discuss “the international situation, the relationship
between the DPRK [North Korea] and Cuba, and Cuba’s steps to cope with the U.S.
blockade [i.e., embargo].” After indulging in anti-American rhetoric, the North
Korean delegation and their Cuban hosts also conducted more serious business.
With “consensus on all the issues,” Castro’s and Kim Jong Il’s armed forces
“exchanged views on strengthening cooperation in military fields” and declared
that “the Cuban army and people will fight shoulder to shoulder with the Korean
army and people in [an] anti-US joint front.” (10)
Vice Marshal Kim Yong Chun's stay in the
island also coincided with the visit of China's president Hu Jintao to Cuba.
(11) Hu extended an economic lifeline to Castro's regime with the commitment of
as much as US$1.5 billion in Chinese government-backed investments to exploit
Cuba's strategic nickel and cobalt ores.(12) It is doubtful that the presence
of Chinese and North Korean leaders in Havana was due to a scheduling
coincidence. Are the Chinese and North Koreans cooperating to support the Cuban
military?
Given Pyongyang’s efforts to develop
nuclear weapons and the missile technology to put them within reach of the
United States, it is disconcerting that Kay’s suggestion of an arms trade
between North Korea and Cuba -- and perhaps involving China -- has been largely
ignored. Particularly worrisome is the apparent failure of policymakers in
Washington to demand further inquiries in order to either substantiate or
debunk such an alarming assertion. If Iraqi documents or other evidence
encountered by American inspectors were to indeed reveal that Cuba has
acquired, or is looking to acquire, ballistic missiles from North Korea, the
geopolitical challenges and security threats facing the United States may be
even greater, and closer to home, than heretofore thought.
_________________________________________________
Notes
1. Cf. International Institute for
Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2004-2005, p. 336.
2. Cf. "Tourists: by the left,
march," The Economist, 29 July 2004
[http://economist.com/diversions/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2976984]. Also see
Cuba Transition Project report, "The Cuban Military in the Economy,"
Cuba Focus, 11 August 2003 [http://ctp.iccas.miami.edu/FOCUS_Web/Issue46.htm].
3. Cf. "Defense minister meets Cuban
guests," Beijing, People's Daily, 3 September 2004
[http://english.people.com.cn/200409/03/eng20040903_155863.html].
4. Cf. International Institute for
Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2004-2005, p. 194.
5. Interview of David Kay by host George
Stephanopoulos, aired Sunday, 5 October 2003. For pertinent excerpts of the ABC
News transcript, see [http://www.autentico.org/oa09655.php].
6. North Korea's versions of the Scud B
and Scud C missiles, the Hwasong 5 and Hwasong 6, have a range of approximately
200 and 300 miles, respectively. Such missiles have become export commodities
to so-called rogue states, particularly in the Middle East. For example, in
December 2002, U.S. and Spanish special forces temporarily intercepted in
international waters a shipment of 15 North Korean-made Scuds on their way to
Yemen. Cf. Bertil Lintner, "North Korea's Missile Trade Helps Fund Its
Nuclear Program," YaleGlobal, 5 May 2003
[http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=1546].
7. Cf. Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev
Remembers: The Glasnost Papers (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1990), pp.
177-183.
8. Cf. AIN, "Reitera Cuba
solidaridad con Corea Democratica," Havana, 5 June 2004.
9. Cf. Idania Rodriguez Echevarria,
"Conversaciones oficiales de jefes militares de Corea y Cuba,"
Havana, Granma, 25 November 2004.
10. Cf. Ri Un Suk, "DPRK military
delegation visits Cuba," The Pyongyang Times, December 11, 2004.
11. Cf. "Hu Jintao, Castro hold
talks," People's Daily, 24 November 2004
[http://english.people.com.cn/200411/24/eng20041124_164959.html].
12. Cf. Marc Frank, "China edges out
Western investors in Cuba nickel," Reuters, Havana, 23 November 2004.
_________________________________________________
Fotografía: Kim Kyok Sik, jefe de la Fuerzas Armadas de Corea del Norte, de visita en La Habana el 1 de julio, se reúne con el gobernante Raúl Castro.
