DAHYENU, CUBA LIBRE:

Peru joins Mexico in suspending Cuba ties: Peru called home its ambassador in Havana, expanding Cuba's diplomatic rift with Mexico and Peru over their U.N. votes to criticize Cuba's human rights record. (NANCY SAN MARTIN AND ANDRES OPPENHEIMER, 5/04/04, Miami Herald)

Mexico's ambassador to Cuba returned home Monday amid a diplomatic rift with Havana that widened significantly, with Peru announcing that it too would recall its ambassador on the island.

The twin actions -- a first for both countries -- will effectively freeze political relations but are unlikely to hamper business ties. Mexico also gave the Cuban ambassador until today to leave Mexico.

The moves followed weekend criticism of Mexico and Peru by President Fidel Castro for recently voting in support of a U.S.-backed U.N. condemnation of Cuba's human rights record.

In a statement released Monday, Cuba's Foreign Ministry said it rejects ``this new act against Cuba and announces that these declarations inspired by high-handedness, arrogance, foolishness and lies will receive their due response.''

The incidents underscored a growing rift between the Western Hemisphere's only communist nation and two major Latin American countries. While Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina have moved ideologically closer to Cuba over the past year, Mexico, Peru and some Central American nations have inched toward cooling their ties with Havana.

''A democratic government in Mexico could not continue with the Institutional Revolutionary Party's complicity with the Cuban dictatorship,'' former foreign minister José Castañeda told a Mexico City radio station Monday.

"Relations have been deteriorating steadily as Mexico becomes more democratic,'' said Castañeda, who served under President Vicente Fox, whose conservative National Action Party ended 70 years of Institutional Revolutionary Party rule.

The fracas with Cuba forced Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez to postpone a visit to Washington on Monday, where he had been expected to give a speech on U.S.-Mexico relations.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, meanwhile, defended Mexico and Peru and described as ''outrageous'' Castro's charges against the two countries.

"Castro, as usual, tried to point the finger of blame in the other direction, back at Mexico and Peru. And Mexico and Peru have responded, in my judgment, appropriately,'' Powell said during the annual Council of the Americas conference.

Let's quit muckin' about already and take him down.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 4, 2004 11:03 AM