The marxine waters - charlie rangle naacLp division is in position now ?
Posted on 10/03/2003 11:25:45 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States, yet to find evidence to back its charge that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, issued a new accusation on Thursday that Cuba had a "limited" biological arms program.
Cuba has previously denied the accusation, repeated on Thursday by Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere Roger Noriega at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Cuba.
Noriega was responding to a question from Sen. Christopher Dodd, a Democrat from Connecticut, who asked why Washington continued to enforce a four-decade sanctions regime against Havana.
Dodd quoted Secretary of State Colin Powell as having said Cuba did not constitute a military threat to the United States and asked: "If it is no longer a threat, why would we maintain those restrictions?"
"We continue ... to believe that Cuba has at least a limited, developmental, offensive biological weapons research and development effort and is providing dual-use biotechnology to other rogue states," said Noriega, the top U.S. diplomat for Latin America.
"There are various aspects of the sort of threat that Cuba might represent," he said, adding that this position was not inconsistent with Powell's statement.
The United States, which lists Cuba as a state that sponsors terrorism, accused President Fidel Castro's government of running a germ weapons program twice last year.
Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque called the charges a "bald-faced lie" and challenged the United States to supply proof.
President Bush accused Saddam Hussein of stockpiling chemical and biological weapons before invading Iraq in March. No sign of such weapons has yet been found in Iraq.
The marxine waters - charlie rangle naacLp division is in position now ?
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