Around the state

U.S. sends 15 back to Cuba

U.S. officials on Monday repatriated 15 Cubans who were intercepted in the Straits of Florida last week after a dozen of them allegedly hijacked a government boat and took three Cuban security guards aboard hostage.

American officials said they decided to return the Cubans after receiving assurances that the alleged hijackers would not be executed.

Cuban authorities praised the move. Havana said in a statement the repatriation was "a valuable contribution by American authorities in the fight against the hijacking of planes and boats for illegal migration."

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said American authorities determined the Cubans were ineligible for amnesty because they had committed acts of violence in Cuba as well as against Coast Guard personnel who boarded the boat Wednesday.

The decision enraged some Cuban-American leaders in Miami.

The U.S. government "has entered into complicity with the Castro regime," said Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, a powerful lobbying group.

Three Cuban-American members of Congress from South Florida, Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, also criticized the move.

"This action makes the U.S. complicit in the fate of the returned refugees," Lincoln Diaz-Balart said in a news release. "To return individuals to Cuba is to hand their fate to the criminal, who is Castro," Ros-Lehtinen said.

The migrants were taken aboard an American Coast Guard cutter after their vessel was stopped in international waters. The Cuban government said its coast guard chased the 36-foot vessel into Bahamian waters Tuesday after it was taken from the communist island.

Reeker of the State Department said the United States, before deciding to return the Cubans, took into account Cuba's summary execution on April 11 of three Cuban hijackers who tried to commandeer a ferry filled with passengers to the United States.

The Cuban government said in its statement that it promised Washington that prosecutors would seek no more than 10 years in prison for the people accused of commandeering the craft last week.

COLUMBUS, Ga. - The governors of Florida, Georgia and Alabama said Monday they have agreed on the principles of how to share water from three rivers flowing through their states.

The states have argued for more than a decade over the water rights in Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin. They are nearing agreement on a plan to allocate water from the basin over the next four decades.

Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue said he, Alabama Gov. Bob Riley and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush hoped to sign off on an outline of the major points sometime next month, then have a draft agreement finished by the end of August.

The Chattahoochee flows from Atlanta to Columbus, where it forms the border between Alabama and Georgia. The Flint forms south of Atlanta and flows southwest to Lake Seminole. It converges with the Chattahoochee to form the Apalachicola, which flows through the Florida Panhandle to the Apalachicola Bay, which Bush has said produces 90 percent of Florida's oysters and 10 percent of the nation's.

The states have debated how to meet the water needs of metropolitan Atlanta and farming in southwest Georgia while ensuring enough still flows into the environmentally sensitive Apalachicola Bay.

"We are closer today than we have ever been, but there are still some nuances that have to be worked out," Riley said. "... We've literally had more progress in the last three or four months than we've had in the last six years."

"There are some wordsmithing, semantic-type negotiations still ongoing," Perdue said.

"Hopefully the letter of intent will be converted into something that will, on a long-term basis, protect one of the country's last pristine ... estuaries, which is Apalachicola Bay," Bush said.

WINTER HAVEN - Richard Coleman, a passionate outdoorsman who helped found the Florida chapter of the Sierra Club, died last week in an airboat collision.

Coleman, 59, was killed Friday while piloting an airboat on a tributary of the Kissimmee River. His airboat and another collided on the Dead River between Lake Hatchineha and Lake Cypress on the Polk-Osceola line.

Coleman, former Florida chairman for the Sierra Club, was credited with championing the Kissimmee River restoration to a skeptical public. The Army Corps of Engineers had turned the 103-mile meandering river into essentially a 56-mile straight drainage ditch, and has since restored some of the river's winding ways and wetlands.

Coleman was a retired chemist for the federal government.

"There was nothing halfhearted about Richard," said his wife, Frances. "This man was hard-charge, gung-ho, full-time, all the time."

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright