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THE Cuban exile terrorist group, Alpha 66, has claimed responsibility for the bomb attacks which hit three Cuban hotels and a tour agency offices this summer.
The daily Granma said declarations by the radical Miami based Alpha 66 "put in ridicule" US demands that Cuba prove its claims that U.S. based groups were behind the bombings.
"Our cells in Cuba" were responsible, said Nazario Sargen, secretary general of Alpha 66. "All the violence that's happening in Cuba has something to do with our contacts."
There were three explosions in different locations in Havana. Two on July 12 in the Nacional and capri hotels in Havana caused minor injuries to three people, and one in the Melia Cohiba hotel on August 4, followed an attack on the offices of the state run Havanatur travel agency in Nassau on the same day.
In April and May two other devices were found in hotel rooms and defused before they could cause damage.
The Cuban government says it has evidence that links the bombings to terrorist groups in the United States and it accuses the United States of sponsoring measures to cripple the economy that go beyond the U.S.-imposed economic embargo.
In June, after two devices were found in hotel rooms, the FBI launched an investigation into the possible US origins of the explosive known as C-4 which was used in all the attacks. The investigation was dropped mysteriously after proving inconclusive. C-4 is a plastic explosive manufactured in the United States and exported to many developing countries.
"What's the difference," asked a Cuban official, "between openly attempting to destroy our economy and covertly using terrorism to accomplish the same end?" But the Unites States denied the accusations.
The Miami Herald, taking advantage of these events and guided by their Cuban "expert" pointed at inner dissatisfaction and possible involvement of renegade military who, in their opinion, were unhappy and provided not only the explosives but access to the hotel lobbies.
In recent years, Cuba has accused the United States of plotting biological war, allowing anti-Castro exiles to plan terrorism from U.S. territory and of illegally waging war against its economy.
If President Clinton wants anti-terrorism to remain a solid pillar of U.S. policy, he should be consistent. He should crack down on anti-Castro exiles in the United States who plan terrorism. The United States has never even apologised for the terrorism it conducted. Instead, each year the State Department routinely places Cuba on its terrorist nation list, even though the evidence points the other way.
A man carrying a German passport was arrested in July on charges of trying to place an "explosive device" in Havana and hiding four others in his rented beach house. But it was not known whether he was responsible for the hotel explosions.
The German news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported that the man detained was carrying German passport No. 81940279 in the name of Michael Andreas Reeb, giving his birth date as Dec. 28, 1961.
Police grabbed the man as he tried to drop off an explosive device in the four-lane tunnel that carries vehicles under the mouth of Havana's Harbour and connects the capital with East Havana, DPA reported.
Detained along with the man were a Cuban woman and perhaps a Cuban man, diplomatic sources in Havana reported. Police also tightened security at the 2,500-foot long tunnel, they added.
Police who searched the room the German had rented in the beach town of Guanabo, about 15 miles east of the capital, turned up four more explosive devices, DPA quoted the man's landlady, Magaly Martínez, as saying.
The agency quoted Martínez as describing the devices as petardos - a Spanish word that could mean fireworks but is normally used in Cuba to denote a relatively small homemade bomb, like a pipe bomb.
The bombs that exploded at the Nacional and Capri this month and at Havana's Cohiba Hotel in April were all medium-sized devices, apparently designed to cause more noise than damage, and were all described as petardos.