Official: Cuba ready to talk about Gross case - other issues on the table too [View all]

[flamingdem]

** There is no new movement in this case but these quotes point to the strategy of the Cuban government to work multiple issues with the USA that go beyond Gross. Havana is willing to dialog and the USA will not participate saying that they must release Gross first.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-57432308-503543/official-cuba-ready-to-talk-about-gross-case/

(CBS News) HAVANA - The Cuban government got a rare opportunity to put its position on a U.S. contractor jailed in Havana and on hostile U.S.-Cuba relations before an American audience Thursday when CNN's Wolf Blitzer interviewed a top Foreign Ministry official.

Josefina Vidal, via satellite from Havana, said that while Cuba is ready to dialogue with the U.S. about the case of Alan Gross they are not advancing any formula, such as a prisoner swap. Instead, the head of the Cuban Foreign Ministry's North America Division declared Havana wants to sit down at the negotiating table with Washington to discuss all outstanding issues in an effort to establish normal relations.

Vidal says that the U.S. demand that Cuba release Gross before it takes any steps to improve relations with the island is just a "pretext" not to do so.

The State Department reacted sharply, saying Vidal's statements only reinforce the U.S. belief that Gross is being held hostage and that there is no justification for his imprisonment.

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Jorge Bolanos, head of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, took umbrage with the way Blitzer and Gross presented the case. A copy of the letter he sent to Blitzer last Tuesday was given to CBS by a Foreign Ministry official. In it, Bolanos insists it is incorrect to say Gross came to Cuba to help the Jewish community connect to the Internet, as claimed by the U.S. State Department. Instead he says Gross concealed from those he met here that he worked for the U.S. government and that he was a paid professional who was "implementing a U.S. government program" aimed at subverting the legal Cuban government.

In an interview with a local CBS station in Baltimore, Gross' wife, Judy, said, "We know now that he did break Cuban law. He did not know that until he got to Cuba and was arrested."

However, leaked documents obtained by The Associated Press reveal that Gross sent messages from Havana in 2009 expressing concern that he could be arrested and that he knew his task for USAID was risky.

The letter from Bolanos refers to Gross' "undercover activities" as constituting "crimes in many countries, including in United States."