Why Mexico Spurns Castro.(Mexican-Cuban relations)(Brief Article)(Interview)

Since Vicente Fox became president of Mexico in 2000, his country's relations with Cuba have been deteriorating. Last week they reached a new low after Fidel Castro released a tape of a private conversation with Fox. Contradicting earlier public statements by Fox, the tape showed that he had encouraged Castro to leave early from a Mexico- hosted United Nations summit in March and urged him to refrain from lashing out at fellow guest George W. Bush. Castro released the tape in retaliation for Mexico's vote against him at the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. The fallout for Fox was at home, where opposition congressmen accuse the president of being a U.S. puppet. The architect of Mexico's policy, Secretary for Foreign Affairs Jorge Castaneda, spoke with NEWSWEEK's Alan Zarembo last week. Excerpts:

ZAREMBO: What did President Fox mean when he said Castro's last-minute plans to attend the U.N. summit put him "in a difficult situation"? Is there any truth to what Cuba says, that Fox was under pressure from the United States?

CASTANEDA: There was no pressure whatsoever from the United States... What President Fox meant is that Castro's announcement 24 hours before he was coming implied logistical problems, security issues. There were no rooms in Monterrey. When Castro gets upset when Fox suggests, "Will you behave?"--the reason Fox was saying that is because [Castro] never behaves in these summits. Every summit there is a tantrum. Every summit there is a fuss. There is a scandal. Every summit there is an antic to, quote-unquote, steal the show. This is complicated with him: hotel, security, logistics, where to seat him, where not to seat him. And there was a substantive problem, which is that we had a consensus document [on financing development], and we did not want to reopen the discussion because everybody agreed--except Castro perhaps.

Did Castro complain when he wound up staying at the Holiday Inn Express?

No, no. But he could have if we hadn't said [before he arrived] that there is a logistics problem.

Why is a sizable chunk of Congress so eager to defend Castro when his government is becoming more and more isolated?

In the case of the PRD [the leftist Partido Revolucionario Democratico], because of their ideological convictions. They are Castroites. They believe in the type of regime and the type of organization of society that exists in Cuba. They obviously have a greater affinity with the government of Cuba than with the government of Mexico.