• Submitted by: manso
• Politics and Government
• 04 / 05 / 2011

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In a report about his trip to Cuba, former President Jimmy Carter writes that Fidel Castro’s main health issues are his knee and shoulder.By Juan O. Tamayo.elnuevoherald.com.

Former President Jimmy Carter’s visit to Cuba last week is generating more controversy, with one critic calling him a “shill” for Havana and another pointing out mistakes in his report on the visit.

Carter’s 1,500 word report, issued Sunday, essentially recorded the meetings he held and some of the comments he heard during his three-day stay in Havana, which he described as a “private” visit to explore ways of improving U.S.-Cuban relations.

The trip drew praise as an attempt by the former president, who made human rights a keystone of his time in the White House, to dissipate some of the acrimony that traditionally dominated bilateral relations.

“His gentle manner, unbending smile and projection of modesty could not possibly contrast more with the thermal rhetoric and testosterone-driven style that typically dominates here and in Miami,” wrote Nick Miroff in the Web site Global Post.


“It’s Cuba’s version of the events,’’ he added.

Carter also met with Cuban rulers Raúl and Fidel Castro; Ricardo Alarcon, head of Cuba’s legislative National Assembly of People’s Power; Cuban and U.S. diplomats; and Alan Gross, a U.S. government subcontractor serving a 15-year sentence in Havana.

He described Fidel Castro as “vigorous, alert’’ and said the former leader’s main health issues were his left knee and right shoulder, injured in a 2004 fall. Carter made no mention of the intestinal infections that nearly killed Castro in 2006.

The report noted that Gross was being held in a hospital and had complained that he was receiving better treatment than other prisoners, although after his arrest in late 2009 he was treated worse than the others.

Gross was accused of delivering satellite communications equipment to Jewish and other “marginalized” group in Cuba as part of a program financed by the U.S. government to expand Cubans’ access to the Internet.

Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez acknowledged “some positive steps” by the Obama administration but complained that the overall impact of recent U.S. policies were “very damaging,” especially the tightening of controls on Cuba’s use of U.S. dollars in financial transactions, Carter wrote.

His report added that Rodriguez also noted that a U.S. government program to promote democracy in Cuba, “which is a regime change strategy funded at $20 million, remains a serious source of concern” for Havana.

Carter’s report added that he also met with two mothers and three wives of the five Cuban spies convicted in Miami and serving long sentences in U.S. prison.

“Their trial in the highly charged Miami political climate was considered to be biased by a U.S. appellate court, but subsequent appeals have been denied,” he wrote, again using imprecise language.

One of the five’s appeals, based on their argument that their trial should have been moved out of Miami, was upheld by a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. That ruling was later overturned by the full Appeals Court. The same Appeals court also upheld the five convictions, but ordered a reduction in the sentences for two of the Cubans.

Source: www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/04/2150412/former-president-carters-cuba.html