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U.S. seeks investigation of Cuban attack

UNITED NATIONS -- The United States asked the Security Council yesterday to order an investigation into Cuba's downing of two American-owned planes and to condemn the incident as an unlawful use of force.

"Our position is that (the planes) were in international airspace and the Cubans knew it," U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright said after the 90-minute meeting.

Chilean Ambassador Juan Somavia said attacking an unarmed civilian plane was "condemnable whether this act occurred within or outside the Cuban airspace."

No decision was made on the U.S. request, but several ambassadors said they were deeply concerned about the use of force against unarmed civilian planes, in this case Cessnas.

"I think the shooting down of an unarmed civil aircraft ... is indeed a threat to international order," German Ambassador Antonio Eitel said after the meeting.

The council met for about 90 minutes, during which CIA official James Gannon presented evidence backing the idea that the planes were over international waters, a few miles north of Cuban airspace, when they were downed on Saturday.

The two downed Cessna planes, which had four people aboard, belonged to a group called Brothers to the Rescue, whose Cuban exile pilots regularly fly over the Florida Straits searching for rafters trying to flee Cuba. Cuba claims the planes had violated their airspace. Senior U.S. administration aides said at least one of the three planes entered Cuban airspace before the shootdown.

Albright said she had asked for a meeting today with the Cuban ambassador to the United Nations to demand an explanation of "the illegal act"

The U.S. request for a full investigation by the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal, will be considered by the council today. It was unclear whether it would be approved.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher yesterday accused Cuba's government of blatantly violating international law and warned that the United States is considering a range of retaliatory actions.

After 15 hours of silence, the Cuban government admitted to downing the planes but declared the action justified because the "pirate Cessna planes" had invaded Cuban airspace.

Tension between the group and Fidel Castro's government in Havana reached new heights recently when the Brothers flew over Cuba at least twice to drop anti-Castro leaflets.

"The shooting down of these pirate planes should be a lesson for those who support and carry out such acts and have the tendency to increase the tension between the United States and Cuba," the Cuban Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement.

But in a briefing to reporters at the White House before departing on a trip to Latin America, Christopher and other senior U.S. officials made it clear that by downing the unarmed private planes Castro's government was provoking the United States.

Clinton's advisers met for three hours yesterday and provided the president with a list of possible actions.

At the president's request, the U.N. Security Council held an emergency consultation last night to discuss the incident and possible international responses.

Christopher stressed that the United States would not "limit ourselves to multinational action," but he refused to specify what options the president was considering.

On the campaign trail in Arizona, Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole said that Castro, in permitting the attack on private planes carrying American citizens, "has demonstrated his contempt for the carrots dangled by the Clinton White House." He said Clinton shares the blame for the tragedy because it was "probably a result of a lack of any real policy toward Cuba."

Dole said Clinton should call on all U.S. allies to halt international civilian air traffic to Cuba, enforce the ban on American travel to Cuba and endorse a Republican congressional measure that would tighten the 34-year-old economic embargo on Cuba.

Under the measure, versions of which have passed both the House and Senate, the U.S. would punish foreign firms that engage in trade with Cuba. Dole said it would reach Clinton in the "near future." The administration has opposed the measure, saying it would infuriate U.S. allies, but Saturday's episode could change that.

The U.S. and Cuban versions of what happened Saturday differ substantially.

According to senior Clinton administration officials, only the plane that survived Saturday's attack had ventured into Cuban air space. The MIG-29 blasted the first plane, a Cessna-337, with an air-to-air missile at a time when the Cuban exiles' plane was five miles north of Cuban airspace, they said.

The Cuban government, however, charged that the two downed planes were inside Cuban airspace and that the third remained outside. It also asserted that a communication among that pilots indicated that they were headed for Havana.

The Brothers' founder, Jose Basulto, who was in the plane that escaped the MIG's attack, had a third version. He insisted that all three planes -- including his own -- were over international waters.

He confirmed assertions from both Havana and Washington that when he and the other pilots flew across the 24th Parallel, a line 40 miles north of Havana that the Cuban government considers its air defense zone, they were warned of the danger. But he asserted that, as a Cuban, he has every right to fly in Cuban airspace.

"Like many times in the past, they warned us we were entering a dangerous area," Basulto said. "But as free Cubans, we proceeded."

The U.S. Coast Guard and Navy conducted a search for the four men aboard the downed planes, but found nothing more than two oil slicks.

As Clinton administration officials contemplated its response, Cuban Americans reacted in anger, holding protests in Miami, New York and Los Angeles.

In Miami, crowds gathered at the monument to those who died at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, denouncing Castro and calling for U.S. military intervention and a full naval blockade of the island.

Hundreds more Cuban Americans spent the day waving flags and condemning Cuba's action outside the Brothers to the Rescue offices at Opa-Locka Airport, north of downtown Miami.

Stoking their rage, Miami television stations throughout the day broadcast videotape made by a passenger on the Majesty of the Seas, a cruise ship passing about 20 miles north of Cuba on Saturday afternoon. On the video is a plume of black smoke, which passengers said followed the MIG attack on one of the planes.

"Missiles, rockets, planes -- I thought a war was going to start," said Dwayne Guerra, a pool attendant aboard the Miami-based ship, who witnessed the attack.