September 10, 1997

Cuban Cardinal condemns
bombings as "terrorism"

HAVANA, Sept 9 (Reuter) - The head of Cuba's Roman Catholic Church, which is preparing for a papal visit, has strongly condemned recent bomb attacks on the communist-ruled island, saying nothing can justify "terrorism."

In a sermon delivered during a Mass in a Havana church on Monday evening, Cardinal Jaime Ortega said the Catholic Church rejected what he called "the ways of violence."

He was referring to a series of bomb explosions last Thursday at three Havana hotels and a popular tourist restaurant, in which an Italian businessman was killed.

"There is nothing that can justify terrorism. There is nothing that can excuse an act of this kind," Ortega, who is also archbishop of Havana, told a packed congregation.

He was speaking at a Mass held to celebrate the feast day of Cuba's Catholic patroness, the Virgin of Charity of El Cobre. During his sermon, Ortega stressed the importance of love and spiritual values over violence and materialism.

Cuban authorities have given no details of their investigation into Thursday's bombings, part of a spate of mysterious bomb attacks in recent months aimed at the tourism sector, the island's biggest hard-currency earner.

Cuba's armed forces minister and security chief, Gen. Raul Castro, the brother of President Fidel Castro, has vowed publicly that the culprits will be found.

Despite the official silence over the investigation, foreign diplomats in Havana said they were hearing persistent reports that a man with a Salvadorean passport was arrested after the fourth and last of Thursday's blasts, at the well-known Bodeguita del Medio bar-restaurant in Old Havana.

According to staff members at the restaurant, Cuban security agents were already on the trail of the suspect before the explosion, which caused damage but no casualties.

In comments to reporters on Friday, Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina suggested that the authorities investigating the bombings had acheived some kind of breakthrough after the explosion at the Bodeguita, a popular Havana tourist attraction made famous by U.S. writer Ernest Hemingway.

Cuba's Interior Ministry has said, without elaborating, that the attacks were "organized, supplied and promoted from the United States." This wording pointed the finger of blame at right-wing Cuban exile groups in Miami, which are fiercely opposed to Fidel Castro and one-party communist rule in Cuba.

Pope John Paul scheduled his Jan. 21-25 trip to Cuba, the only Latin American nation he has not yet visited, after a marked improvement in relations between the Cuban government and the Catholic Church. Relations were sometimes tense in the years after the 1959 revolution led by Castro.

9 September 1997-Copyright 1997 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.