The State Department’s acting Cuba desk chief, John Regan, said Havana had not made an issue of the base, which under the agreement is leased in perpetuity unless both sides agree to end the arrangement.
“To my knowledge, the Cubans have never officially asked for it back,†Regan said.
Nor have they raised any objection to the detention mission at the monthly fence-line meeting of U.S. and Cuban military officials, the forum at which they were advised of the new role for the base at a January 2002 meeting, Regan said.
Neither officials in Havana nor Cuban diplomats in Washington responded to numerous telephone and e-mail requests to express their views on Guantanamo. But American business, political and cultural figures with regular contact with Cuban leaders say they have the impression that Castro’s government wants the U.S. military off the island but that the issue isn’t a priority now.
Sarah Stephens, head of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, said she’d never heard Cuban officials mention Guantanamo during any of her 30-plus trips to Havana with congressional and other delegations.
“I always just assumed it was something they know they can’t control,†she said of the lease deal, noting that the annual rent checks hadn’t been cashed since the first year Castro was in power.
Castro hadn’t yet aligned his government with the Soviet Union when, in the summer of 1959, he cashed the U.S. Treasury check for that year’s base rental. U.S. officials have cited that action in defending their continued use of the base, contending that it signaled his acceptance of the 1903 agreement.
http://www.coha.org/2007/04/guantanamo-echoes-us-gunboat-past/
