Ready for Anything

Whatever Fidel Castro may have had in mind with his water war against Guantanamo, the U.S. last week moved to make the Navy base "a little more ready" for any eventuality.

To Westinghouse Electric Corp. went a $4,000,000 contract for a saltwater conversion plant capable of producing 1,000,000 gal. of fresh water per day; a new catchment basin to collect rain water will also be built, along with an underground reservoir holding 4,000,000 gal. in reserve. By August "Gitmo" will be self-sufficient, no longer concerned about the Cuban waterworks that Castro shut off in reprisal for the seizure of four Cuban fishing boats violating Florida waters.

Even if Castro turns the water on again, the Navy will not use a drop. Nor will it continue to employ most of the 2,500 Cuban workers who commute daily to the base. Last week the first 500 Cubans were dismissed. Furthermore, no more U.S. dependents will be allowed at Guantanamo, once considered about the sunniest assignment a Navy man and his family could draw.

The 3,000 women and children already there will be withdrawn by normal rotation. By early 1966, Gitmo will be in a class with such bleak outstations as Thule and Antarctica--a "hardship post," with tours of duty reduced from two years to one.

Another Panama? The orders might seem overly severe. But Washington still believes Castro may be working himself up to a major, Panama-style confrontation over Guantanamo. Immediately after the Jan. 9 Canal Zone riots, Castro's radio started appealing to Cuban workers on the base to return to the "motherland." A few weeks ago, Havana's propagandists railed that "drunken U.S. Marines indiscriminately fired their machine guns at Cuban workers." Castro militiamen have resumed their rock-throwing at U.S. sentries, recently fired a burst of machine-gun fire over the heads of a Marine squad inside the fence.

Some Castrologists argue that if Cuba is actually setting the stage for a direct challenge to Guantanamo, the U.S. is overreacting by putting the base on ready status. Though Castro denies the legality of the 1903 agreement, by which Cuba leased Guantanamo to the U.S. for an indefinite period, and has not cashed any of the checks (a nominal $3,386 per year) that the U.S. pays as rent, he has never interfered with workers on the base--thus, in effect, agreeing that the U.S. has a right to be there. By firing the workers, goes the argument, the U.S. itself tends to abrogate the agreement.

"We Will Remain." The State Department, however, considers all such arguments extraneous. A 1934 treaty clearly states that there can be no change in the status of Guantanamo without the specific consent of both sides. And on Guantanamo the U.S. has no intention of sitting down to negotiate with Castro. Said Secretary of State Dean Rusk: "We are in Guantanamo and will remain there for the foreseeable future. We shall certainly not discuss the future of Guantanamo with a regime that does not speak for the Cuban people and that has been unanimously condemned by the governments of this hemisphere."

A five-nation investigating team from the Organization of American States wound up a month-long study of aggression charges brought by the government of Venezuela against Cuba. The Venezuelans made the accusation after uncovering a three-ton cache of smuggled arms with Cuban markings, produced other evidence that Castro's Communist regime was beaming in subversive radio propaganda, training guerrillas and financing terrorist operations. On all four counts, the OAS team found the evidence overwhelming. The Venezuelans will now press for collective OAS sanctions against Cuba under the Rio Treaty.

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