Cuba readies military hardware for show

Cuba readies military hardware for show
By ANITA SNOW, Associated Press Writer Fri Dec 1, 9:47 PM ET

HAVANA - Communist Cuba's military is rolling out its olive green
Soviet-era hardware this weekend, summoning 300,000 troops and citizen
soldiers for a show of strength in times made uncertain by
Fidel Castro's illness.

Anti-aircraft missiles, tanks and armored vehicles, MiG fighter jets and
helicopter gunships have rehearsed in recent days for Saturday's parade
in Havana's Plaza of the Revolution.

"These Arms Will Never Bow Down Before the Empire!" the red letters of
an eight-story-high banner proclaimed Friday from the side of the
National Library facing the plaza.

Loyalists across the capital have been exhorted to participate in the
event, aimed at warning Cuba's enemies abroad and at home that the
revolutionary government has the means and manpower to defend itself.
Cuban officials have not said whether the ailing leader will attend.

"We want a massive and disciplined turnout," an official told government
hotel and restaurant workers in Old Havana after calling them into the
street for a speech aimed at sparking revolutionary fervor.

Committees of Revolutionary Defense — neighborhood groups that keep tabs
on residents — also urged a big turnout during impromptu meetings on the
capital's crumbling sidewalks.

"You're going to see plenty of armor, every aircraft they can put in the
sky, plenty of guns — self-propelled and towed," predicted Hal Klepak,
an expert on Cuba's military who teaches history at the Royal Military
College of Canada.

Cuba's military stockpiles have been diminished by years of disuse, lack
of parts and tropical humidity. But experts believe the island still has
more working tanks, missiles and other materiel than most Latin American
nations.

The show of strength also underscores the role Cuba's Revolutionary
Armed Forces will likely play in maintaining order and guiding the
nation after Castro is gone. Cuba's aging leaders have long insisted the
island's communist system will outlive them.

"In Latin America, when times are confused, the military traditionally
forms the final bulwark," said Klepak. "That's also true in Cuba."

Saturday's military parade comes four months after Castro underwent
emergency surgery for intestinal bleeding and temporarily ceded power to
his 75-year-old brother, Defense Minister Raul Castro.

Many Cubans hope Castro will attend the parade, making his first public
appearance since falling ill.

Vice President Carlos Lage on Friday predicted that Castro's health
would improve and that the island would remain socialist long into the
future.

"Fidel will recover, we will have him with us, he will keep leading, and
we will ask him to keep doing so for some years more," Lage said.

U.S. officials, however, have said they believe the man who ruled Cuba
for 47 years has some kind of inoperable cancer and will not live
through the end of 2007.

Even if Castro were in perfect health, the armed forces probably would
have still held a parade to mark its 50th anniversary. "But it probably
wouldn't have been this big, and it may not have even been in Havana,"
Klepak said.

The parade's most obvious purpose is to warn the United States against
taking advantage of Castro's illness to attack the island.

The same warning was sent in early August after Castro fell ill, when as
many as 200,000 regular and reserve troops were mobilized and placed on
high alert.

In those first few weeks, newly activated reservists donned olive green
uniforms and black combat boots to patrol the cobblestone streets of Old
Havana while retired officers and decommissioned soldiers were ordered
to check in daily at military posts.

Estimates of troop strength on this island of 11.2 million people vary
between 39,000 to 55,000, depending on the source and which branches of
the service are included.

"The Cuban Army remains one of the most formidable in Latin America" and
"remains well-trained and professional in nature," according to the
publication Jane's World Armies.

Cuba can also count on more than 1 million militia members, as well as
paramilitary and civilian defense groups. Cuba's "War of All the People"
military doctrine calls on all other able-bodied citizens to take up
arms in the event of a foreign invasion.

Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces, which replaced the military that
existed before the Cuban Revolution, traces its roots to Dec. 2, 1956,
when 82 rebels landed on the island on a yacht — the Granma — that
sailed from Mexico.

Fidel and Raul Castro were among the fewer than two dozen rebels who
survived the landing to reach the mountains, where they launched a
guerrilla war against then-President Fulgencio Batista.

After the revolution triumphed in 1959, the new government enjoyed its
first major military victory at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961 when the
island's nascent militia forces soundly defeated a
CIA-led exile army that invaded the country.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061202/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cuba_military_4