VZCZCXYZ0000
PP RUEHWEB

DE RUEHDG #2720/01 2361256
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 241256Z AUG 06
FM AMEMBASSY SANTO DOMINGO
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 5872
INFO RUEHZA/WHA CENTRAL AMERICAN COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEHUB/USINT HAVANA PRIORITY 0129
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC PRIORITY
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY

UNCLAS SANTO DOMINGO 002720 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR WHA/CAR SEARBY 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PHUM PINR PREL CU DR
SUBJECT: DOMINICAN MFA OFFICIAL COMMENTS THAT "COMPACT WITH 
THE CUBAN PEOPLE" BENEFITS CASTRO 
 
REF: STATE 113702 
 
¶1. (SBU) Summary.  In response to shared points regarding the 
"Compact with the Cuban People," Embassy received a four page 
written response by Ambassador Danilo P. Clime, Director of 
the Caribbean Affairs Section of the Dominican Ministry of 
Foreign Affairs.  Clime asserts in his response that, given 
U.S. history in the region, the manner in which the Compact 
is written, including specific guarantees of basic service 
provision during a democratic transition and warnings against 
third-party interference, allows it to easily be 
misrepresented as an imperialist manifesto.  He considers the 
Compact to play directly into the hands of Castro and those 
others hoping to perpetuate a communist dictatorship.  We see 
Clime's intellectual distance from Cuban realities as 
characteristic of the ruling PLD party. End summary. 
 
¶2.  (U) The Embassy's delivery of reftel points on the 
"Compact with the Cuban People" elicited a lengthy written 
commentary from the Dominican Foreign Ministry official Amb. 
Danilo P. Clime, responsible for Caribbean affairs.  Poloff 
contacted Clime to determine whether his reply was personal 
or official. 
 
--------------- 
Danilo P. Clime 
--------------- 
 
¶2. (U) The tone of Clime's missive and personal conversation, 
suggest Clime is primarily an academic.  He holds advanced 
degrees in general social studies, law and international 
relations, and strategic studies on security and defense.  He 
has served as a professor for the bulk of his professional 
career at both the Technological Institute of Santo Domingo 
(INTEC) and the Technological Institute of Santiago 
(Dominican Republic) (UTESA).  He identifies himself as a 
"sociologist", is popularly described as such, and is the 
author of several books dealing with sociological themes as 
they apply to the Dominican Republic.  He is a minor media 
figure -- serving as co-host of the local television show 
"Sondeo" ("Opinion-Taking"). 
 
¶3. (SBU) Clime is no longer politically active in any real 
sense, though he was an active communist party member prior 
to his expulsion in 1977 for "revisionism."  Subsequent work 
as the Executive Director of the Dominican Federation of 
Merchandisers suggests that he substantially modified his 
early beliefs. 
 
¶4. (SBU) Clime's presence at the Foreign Ministry under both 
Fernandez administrations (previously as an 
Ambassador-at-large) reflects the ruling Dominican Liberation 
Party's (PLD) historic ties with the left, as well as 
President Fernandez's affinity for academics and academia. 
Clime's comments should be viewed as generally in-line with 
PLD and governmental policy. 
 
-------------------------------------------- 
Clime on the "Compact with the Cuban People" 
-------------------------------------------- 
 
-- U.S. History and the "Latin" Mind 
 
¶5. (U) Clime suggests that the U.S. history in the region 
presents the United States with a complicated policy 
environment.  While the explicit post-Cold War goal of the 
United States to construct functional democracies in Latin 
America is highly appreciated and marks an important 
reference point for U.S.-Latin American relations, the 
longer-term history of the United States in the region is one 
of governmental relations based on misinformation, 
stereotypes, and to a certain degree, demonization and latent 
resentment.  Despite this difficult environment, all agree, 
including "anti-imperialist" Cubans with whom Clime has had 
limited contact, that the United States will and should play 
a "starring role" in any democratic transition process 
involving Cuba. 
 
¶6. (U) Clime holds, however, that in doing so the United 
States must consider that reliance on emotion, speculation, 
and conjecture are principal features of Latin political 
culture.  That is to say, given the history of U.S. relations 
with Latin America and the Latin penchant for "discovering" 
hidden agendas, any rational statements of policy will 
certainly be read regionally with an eye for conspiracy and 
intervention. 
 
 
-- The Role of the Exile Community 
 
¶7. (U) In an attempt to demonstrate the risks posed by 
non-analytical political thinking, Clime offers a Dominican 
example: the upheaval immediately following the assassination 
of General Rafael Trujillo in 1961.  Clime attributes much of 
the discord to returning exiles who, emotion-driven, failed 
to recognize that their lengthy disconnect from Dominican 
public life caused them to lack both legitimacy and 
credibility in the political sphere. 
 
¶8. (SBU) By characterizing both the Dominican Republic under 
Trujillo and Cuba under Castro as personality-based 
dictatorships, Clime implicitly warns that U.S. support for 
Cuban exile groups, participation in any democratic 
transition would be counter-productive. 
 
¶9. (SBU) Clime expanded on this point, suggesting that large 
segments of the Cuban internal resistance movement have 
already signaled an unwillingness to accept the direction of 
potential leaders in exile.  He takes the time specifically 
to repudiate the position of the Cuban-American Foundation 
(FNCA) as particularly disruptive.  For Clime, the FNCA's 
declaration that it "will not negotiate with those with 
blood-stained hands" runs the risk of creating a significant 
political void.  Clime says that the resulting void could be 
dangerous (a parallel might be found in the stringent 
de-Baathification following the Coalition's victory in 
Operation Iraqi Freedom).  He also highlights a recent clash 
of strategy between Cuba's internal dissidents (especially 
Vladimiro Roca) and the Cuban exile community -- while Roca 
and others called for reserved debate during the Elian 
Gonzalez crisis, this course of action was emphatically not 
followed by the "Calle 8" exile community in Miami. 
 
-- Warning to "Third Parties" Confusing and Unnecessary 
 
¶10. (SBU) Considering the exile community to be essentially a 
third party, Clime suggests that the U.S. position 
"discouraging third parties from intervening and interfering 
with the will of the Cuban people" is, at best, ambiguous. 
This warning (which Clime assumes to be aimed at Venezuelan 
President Hugo Chavez), is unnecessary, in his view.  Despite 
the early success of insurgent, messianic, populist 
"anti-imperialist" movements in Venezuela and Bolivia, 
Chavista movements in Peru and Mexico have not met with 
success.  The majority of Latin Americans remain blase when 
confronted with this type of movement in any case. 
 
-- Assertion: U.S. Actions Provide Cover for Castro 
 
¶11. (SBU) How do these radical movements survive given that 
the majority of Latin Americans reject the underlying 
philosophy? For Clime, it is because the regimes in question 
are able to rally nationalists to their cause.  Clime 
hypothesizes that personality-based dictatorships are 
inherently unstable; the erosion of institutions creates 
vacancies in the public space at the same time it reduces the 
legitimacy and credibility of government interlocutors.  The 
ability of the regime to survive rests on its ability 
nevertheless to present convincing arguments for credibility. 
 Castro has been able to do this over the last forty years by 
constantly reinforcing the concept of the external enemy.  In 
socialist or communist regimes the watchword is 
"imperialism," that is anti-Americanism.  In Latin American 
regimes, a predisposition to assume the worst of U.S. 
intentions makes it that much easier to play the 
"nationalist" or "anti-imperialist" card in the face even of 
innocuous U.S. policy statements.  Clime says, "For this 
reason, the United States should at all costs avoid the 
appearance of direct intervention in Cuba." 
 
¶12. (SBU) However, as Clime notes, this is precisely the 
approach of the announced plan. The "blunt manner" in which 
the United States provides guarantees of foodstuffs, water, 
and fuel, combined with plans for U.S. assistance in 
reconstructing the Cuban economy, evokes precisely the direct 
intervention in Cuban "internal affairs" that drives forward 
Castro's anti-imperialist message. 
 
-- "Removing Blockade Would Undercut Castro's Support" 
 
¶13. (SBU) Rather than pursuing publication of the Compact 
(which Clime views as nothing more than a contingency plan 
for the eventual passage of Castro from the political scene), 
 
Clime proposes the abandonment of the current "blockade" 
against Cuba.  Clime suggests that dropping this "ineffective 
blockade" would be a proactive step leading to the collapse 
of communism in Cuba, much as socialism collapsed in the 
former Soviet Bloc after exposure to the West. 
 
¶14. (U) Reintegration of Cuba into the international 
community and the western hemisphere would result in 
increased scrutiny by international courts, the dynamic 
opening of commerce, and the dismantling of the fundamental 
base of Castro's legitimacy, which, after all, is a principal 
goal of the United States in the region. 
 
------- 
COMMENT 
------- 
 
¶15.  (SBU) Clime's analysis is probably very close to that of 
the ruling PLD and President Fernandez.  They take a 
relatively cool, intellectual view of Cuba, unwilling to 
challenge the repressive authoritarianism of Castro and his 
government, in part because Cuban ideologues supported the 
resistance against Dominican dictator Trujillo and the armed 
expedition in 1973 against the autocratic Balaguer. Although 
that Cuban-supported intervention failed, many Dominicans, 
even today, consider its participants to be martyrs for 
democracy.  Even the conservative Hipolito Mejia thought long 
and hard before directing his foreign minister to vote in 
favor of the Cuba resolution at UNHCR in 2004. 
¶16.  (SBU) Under the ousted and then defeated Juan Bosch, the 
PLD was born in the 1970's as a disciplined association of 
believers in Marxism and "imposed democracy," a group that 
included the young and impressionable Fernandez.  They have 
had the luxury of witnessing the long failure of Cuban 
domestic politics while benefiting from the pluralism and 
gradual positive evolution of the Dominican electoral system. 
Cuba is something of an embarrassment to them -- which is, 
perhaps, one of the reasons that the PLD has so carefully 
ignored the human rights abuses of the Castro government. 
 
¶17. This and similar reporting may be found on the Embassy's 
SIPRNET website at: 
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/wha/santodomingo.  
BULLEN