Havana knows no more about the
U.S. Defence Department intelligence analyst arrested in
Washington for allegedly spying for Cuba than what it has
read in newspapers, top Cuban officials say.
Ana Belen Montes, who had worked at the Defence
Intelligence Agency since 1985, was arrested in September
and charged with giving classified defence information to Cuba
for the past five years. She could face the death penalty or life
imprisonment if convicted of spying for the communist state.
"We have read this news too. It remains to be seen, to be
known and to be confirmed if what has been said publicly
corresponds to the truth," Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage
told a news conference after attending a summit in Lima.
"Our foreign policy is not one of espionage, it is not a policy of
knowing North American policy interests, strategy, arms,
development. All that is lies and fallacy.
"We defend ourselves from the aggression of the United States, from the U.S.
economic war against Cuba and the terrorist acts that take place and have taken place
for 40 years against Cuba," he said, referring to a U.S. trade embargo imposed shortly
after Cuba's 1959 communist revolution.
Lage attended the summit of Latin American, Spanish and Portuguese leaders instead
of Cuban President Fidel Castro, who stayed home to direct relief operations after a
devastating hurricane earlier this month.
Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque added: "We are reading the papers every day
(about Montes). We don't know more."
In an affidavit, the FBI said Montes used encrypted codes to contact Cuban
intelligence agents via radio, a method employed by five other people convicted in
June in Miami of spying for Cuba.
Montes, who specialised in Cuban affairs for nine years, also passed and received
computer discs containing encrypted messages and used public pay phones to send
classified information, the affidavit charged.
The FBI searched Montes' apartment, office, car and safe deposit box at a local bank
and trawled computer hard drives for deleted data. Agents said they recovered a
message from the Cuban intelligence service thanking Montes for exposing an
undercover U.S. agent to them.
