Word: ra
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Both Cuba and Venezuela, where Posada had citizenship when the the Cubana Airlines flight blew up in 1976, have demanded Posada's extradition. So far, federal judges have declined to send him to either country, where Posada insists he would be tortured. (Cuban President Raúl Castro and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez have insisted he wouldn't.) But some analysts believe that if the U.S. were to eventually lock Posada away - a grand jury in New Jersey is investigating his involvement in the bombings - it might turn down the volume of the calls for extradition in Havana...
...Indeed, Raúl, who until succeeding Fidel was Cuba's Defense Minister for almost five decades, placed numerous military brass loyal to him in key posts. They included General Jose Amado Ricardo Guerra as Secretary of the Council of Ministers, who replaces Carlos Lage, 57, a physician turned economics czar who is widely credited with seeing Cuba through the financially harrowing 1990s after the island lost its massive Soviet subsidies. Lage was often mentioned as a possible successor to Fidel...
Both Lage and Perez Roque are said to have fallen out of favor with Raúl. But Fidel, in an effort to dispel the widespread appearance of Raulismo vs. Fidelismo, published an essay in the state-run Cuba Debate a day after Raúl's changes in which he insisted that he had signed off on the ousters. In classic Fidel style - portraying fired officials as fallen communist angels - he wrote that Perez Roque and Lage were "liberated from their posts" not because they were Fidelistas but because "the honey of power" had infected them and "awakened...
Although he is considered a Raulista, Rodriguez remains a relatively unknown entity in the Castro hierarchy. As experts like Mora point out, it's too soon to tell if Raúl chose Rodriguez with a proactive U.S.-Cuba mission in mind or simply to have a professional but nondescript bureaucrat warm the Foreign Minster's seat. Raúl already consults a small core of foreign policy veterans on U.S. policy, including Jorge Bolaños, Cuba's de facto ambassador in Washington, and Fernando Remírez de Estenoz, one of Cuba's most respected diplomats...
Obama and Raúl will continue to approach each other hopefully but cautiously. The U.S. President, who is set to attend next month's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad - at which Cuba is the only disinvited nation - says he favors keeping the embargo largely in place until Cuba demonstrates political reform. But he also knows that opening up to the island is necessary to mending Washington's broken relations with Latin America in general. By the same token, Raúl, who has insisted on U.S. concessions on items like the embargo before he delivers his own, like...