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.

"Who's the worse abuser in Cuba? We for protecting our country from subversion or you at Guantanamo and elsewhere?" young orators screech at events outside the mission as part of what they call "the battle of ideas" between the official ideology and what they say is U.S. imperialist thought.

When the Christmas lights went up, so too did a 6 ½ foot-long, 6 ½ foot-high and 3 foot-wide model of a prison cell. The United States says it is an exact replica of where physician Oscar Elias Biscet, who has spent more than four years in Cuban prisons for opposing the government, is held.

Frosty and the 75 came down when the holiday season ended. Cuba reciprocated by removing from a nearby apartment building a two-story lampoon of top U.S. diplomat James Cason as Santa riding a sled pulled by soldiers and dropping bombs. The music was toned down, but the U.S. Interests Section is still besieged.

A tall and thick iron fence surrounds the building. Cuban police are posted every 15 feet outside. Youth rally and stage political events at an outdoor amphitheater just a few hundred feet from the front door. Huge billboards of Iraq torture scenes face the mission and a tired-looking eagle with a big "B" for Bush is painted across the highway outside where it is run over thousands of times each day.

Cuba wants the mock prison cell, located inside the fence near where hundreds of Cubans pass in search of visas removed, according to U.S. diplomats. The United States is refusing.

"It seems the Cuban government doesn't like the battle of ideas. Here's our idea: that political prisoners shouldn't be kept in sub-human cells, that they shouldn't be incarcerated at all and that average Cubans should know what their government does. And Castro's response: remove that cell from public view so I can keep my human rights abuses secret," a U.S. Interests Section official said.

Cuban youth will stage a televised rally tonight at the Interests Section to mark the 152nd anniversary of national hero Jose Marti's birth.

"The event will be a response of our youngest generations to the threats and provocations of the U.S. government," says a call to the rally front by the official media.

This work is the opinion of the columnist and in no way reflects the opinion of ABC News.