U.S.-Cuba Spat Spills Into the New Year

Jan. 28, 2005 -- -- With the Bush administration branding Cuba an "outpost of tyranny" and Havana yelling "fascists" back, the longtime foes seem in no mood to compromise these days.

U.S. diplomats huddle in their offices planning acts of political theater they say are aimed at drawing attention to Cuban human rights violations and getting President Fidel Castro's goat. The Caribbean island's leaders plot their counterattacks somewhere in Revolution Palace, headquarters of both the government and ruling Communist party.

The two countries are still going at it in a bitter tit-for-tat holiday dispute that has spilled into the New Year and been marked by almost daily youth rallies and other activities in front of the U.S. diplomatic mission, a harbinger, analysts say, of the extremely tense relations expected during President Bush's second term.

"With Secretary Rice at the State Department, Secretary Guttierez at the Commerce Department, a Cuban-American senator and four Cuban-Americans in the House, and Republicans already jockeying for the 2008 presidential nomination, there will most certainly be an increased harshness in the tone and implementation of U.S. policy toward Cuba," said John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, which monitors relations between the two countries.

Washington broke off diplomatic relations with Havana and imposed sanctions on Cuba after Castro's 1959 revolution, but the two countries maintain lower-level Interests Sections in each other's capitals.

The Christmas quarrel erupted over the U.S. mission's traditional holiday lights display depicting Santa, Frosty and candy canes. The display also included a big 75, which symbolizes a group of pro-democracy activists serving long prison terms.

The government charged the display was provocative and demanded it come down, but the United States refused.

Cuba then erected billboards around the mission with photographs of hooded and bloodied inmates at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, U.S. soldiers accosting children, and bold red swastikas and the word "fascists." Lampoons of U.S. foreign policy also went up and peace music was blared at the building.

"The U.S. is definitely not being diplomatic and the Cubans are being childish. It is like a very bad divorce that never ends," said a European diplomat of the scene.