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03/01/13 - Washington Post - Cuba and US at odds again, this time over treatment of paroled intelligence agent 

Associated Press

HAVANA - Washington and Havana are trading barbs over U.S. treatment of a
Cuban intelligence agent who left prison in 2011 but has been ordered to
remain in America while he completes three years of parole.

Cuba complained this week that it has not been afforded consular access to
Rene Gonzalez since September, a violation, it said, of the 1963 Vienna
Convention. Gonzalez, one of the so-called Cuban Five, was granted release
in October 2011 after completing all but two years of a 15-year sentence.
He is serving his parole in an undisclosed location, though he was allowed
last year to briefly return to Cuba to visit his ailing brother.

On Thursday, the State Department responded, saying Washington has no
obligation to extend Gonzalez consular access since he is a dual U.S.-Cuban
citizen, and the convention applies only to foreigners.

The State Department said Gonzalez had been granted consular access while
in prison as a "courtesy," and had also traveled to Washington in recent
months to meet with Cuban diplomats there. The two countries lack formal
ties but maintain diplomatic missions known as Interests Sections, instead
of embassies, in their respective capitals.

The State Department noted that each country bars the other's diplomatic
envoys from leaving the capital without permission, hinting that the
restriction was a reason Gonzalez could not meet Cuban consular officials
wherever he is living.

Cuba responded shortly after the State Department issued its statement,
saying late Thursday that it has let U.S. diplomats travel outside Havana
to meet with jailed American and Cuban-American citizens.

"In recent months, U.S. functionaries, including the head of the U.S.
Interests Section, have been granted consular access (to prisoners in the
provinces of) Matanzas, Camaguey, Ciego de Avila, Artemisa and Mayabeque,"
Josefina Vidal, the Cuban Foreign Ministry's head of North American
affairs, said in a statement. "These travel permissions for consular access
have been authorized without exception."

She said Gonzalez had also been denied permission to travel away from the
location where he is serving his parole.

Despite the rebuke, Vidal's statement was free of any specific threats of
retaliatory measures Cuba might take to limit consular access on the
island, a sign, perhaps, of a slight thaw in relations in recent weeks. A
delegation of U.S. lawmakers led by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, was in
Cuba last month and met for nearly three hours with President Raul Castro.

They also were allowed to visit U.S. government subcontractor Alan Gross,
whose 2009 arrest has hampered efforts at a wider rapprochement between the
Cold War enemies. Gross was sentenced to 15 years in jail after he was
caught bringing communications equipment into the country illegally while
on a USAID-funded democracy-building program.

The Cuban Five were arrested in 1998 and convicted three years later of
being part of a ring that sought to spy on Florida military installations,
Cuban exile groups and politicians opposed to Castro's government.

One of the agents was also convicted of murder conspiracy connected to
Cuban fighter jets' shooting down of an exile flight over the Florida
Straits in 1996.

Havana maintains that the men were no threat to U.S. national security and
were only monitoring militant anti-Castro exiles in Florida, some of whom
are blamed for a string of bombings in Cuba.

The other four agents are still behind bars serving sentences ranging up to
life in prison.

___

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Original Source / Fuente Original:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/cuba-and-us-at-odds-again-this-time-over-treatment-of-paroled-intelligence-agent/2013/03/01/a75e063c-8283-11e2-a671-0307392de8de_story.html