So is Cuba biowar threat or not?

MIAMI -- The Bush administration appears to have some explaining to do.

In a May 6 speech, John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, declared: "The United States believes that Cuba has at least a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort."

It was the first time any senior U.S. official had made that serious allegation. Bolton also accused Cuba of sharing dual-use biotechnology with "rogue states" that are enemies of the United States.

"We know that Cuba is collaborating with other state sponsors of terror. . . . Castro continues to view terror as a legitimate tactic to further revolutionary objectives," he added.

For many of us who cover Cuba closely, the speech came as a total surprise. Cuba takes great pride in its advanced biotechnology industry, which specializes in producing pharmaceuticals, including the world's only meningitis B vaccine and several generic versions of AIDS medications.

On a lighter note, according to the Wall Street Journal, Cuba has lately been concentrating its biotech efforts on trying to clone a native cow that holds the world record for milk production.

Although some Cuban exiles have long argued that Cuba represented a terrorist threat to this country, as far as we were aware Washington had until now never been impressed by the bioterror allegations.

Did Bolton's speech signal a change of heart? And if Cuba was truly developing bioweaponry, how worried should we be in Florida, only 90 miles away from this deadly new threat?

But in the days after Bolton's speech his words seemed to evaporate into a confusing haze of political ambiguity.

Asked the next morning by reporters for his comment, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appeared to distance himself from the State Department. "I have not seen the intelligence that apparently led Undersecretary Bolton to make those remarks," he said.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was also having difficulty explaining the administration's position. "One of the issues that is always difficult when dealing with bioweaponry is that it is hard to find," he said. So did the administration have the goods on Cuba, or not?

Apparently not, according to Secretary of State Colin Powell. He too seemed to backtrack. "We didn't say it (Cuba) actually had some weapons, but it has the capacity to conduct such research," he said.

In an interview last week with the Miami Herald, the acting commander of U.S. military forces in Latin America, Army Maj. Gen. Gary Speer, said he, too, had seen no evidence that Cuba is producing biological weapons.

In an attempt to cut through the confusion I called Bolton's office. I wanted to ask if there had been a slip of the tongue. Perhaps he did not mean to say Cuba had an ongoing biowarfare "effort," and that Powell's version of "capacity" was the correct definition.

In an interview the undersecretary insisted what he had said was the truth and could be backed up by intelligence data. "We are very confident about the extent of our information," he said.

Bolton may be confident. But that doesn't appear to be shared governmentwide.

Bolton's speech came only a few days before former President Jimmy Carter visited Cuba this month. During a tour of the island's highly acclaimed Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Carter said U.S. officials had told him before his visit there was no evidence linking Cuba to the export of biological weapons.

"I asked them myself on more than one occasion if there was any evidence that Cuba has been involved in sharing any information with any country on earth that could be used for terrorist purposes. And the answer from our experts on intelligence was 'no,' " he said.

Odder still, when the State Department put out its 177-page report on trends in global terrorism last week, the 47 lines dedicated to Cuba -- while citing other areas of concern -- made no mention of biological warfare research. Asked to explain the omission during a congressional hearing, the senior official for Latin America at the State Department, Otto Reich, replied, "It must be incomplete."

Reich is a Cuban-American exile and former anti-Castro lobbyist, known for his hard-line attitude toward Cuba. It turns out Bolton is no stranger to political activism himself. During the Florida election recount he served as an official Republican Party observer in Palm Beach County.

Was his Cuba speech also designed to win votes in Florida? some have asked. Was it a coincidence that his speech was made only a few days before the Carter trip to Cuba and Bush's own May 20 visit to Miami?

In the current heightened terrorism alert, the public has every right to expect that allegations of bioterrorism -- they don't get much more serious than that -- be treated with the political straight talk they deserve.

Unproven allegations of this kind can seriously undermine a government's credibility, which is much needed in time of war.

It's time the administration offered a satisfactory explanation.

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