Kissinger suggested smashing Cuba in 1976, documents show

Washington, Oct 3 (IANS/EFE) Then secretary of state Henry Kissinger ordered the preparation of secret contingency plans "to smash" Cuba in response to Fidel Castro's 1975 move to deploy Cuban troops to Angola, according to declassified documents made public by an independent research group.

"I think we are going to have to smash Castro," Kissinger told president Gerald Ford. "We probably can't do it before the (1976 US presidential) elections."

"I agree," Ford responded, according to documents obtained from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library through a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by Peter Kornbluh, head of the National Security Archive's Cuba Documentation Project.

"If we decide to use military power it must succeed. There should be no halfway measures," Kissinger instructed Gen. George Brown of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during a March 24, 1976, meeting that included secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld.

The papers from the Ford Library are quoted in the book "Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana," by American University professor William M. LeoGrande and the archive's Kornbluh.

Cuba sent thousands of soldiers to support the Leftist People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola, or MPLA, in its war with the rival UNITA and FNLA organisations, who were supported by the US and South Africa.

"If they (Cubans) move into Namibia or Rhodesia, I would be in favour of clobbering them," Kissinger told Ford, according to a memorandum detailing a March 15, 1976, conversation in the Oval Office.

Namibia, just south of Angola, was then controlled by South Africa, while the white minority of government of Rhodesia was battling the guerrillas who would eventually take power and rename the country Zimbabwe.

The secret contingency plan for Cuba included airstrikes, mining harbors and imposing a naval blockade.

Kissinger's consideration of war with Cuba came after long secret diplomatic negotiations aimed at normalising relations between Washington and Havana, LeoGrande and Kornbluh wrote.

--IANS/EFE

vr