Cuba rejects rejoining OAS

Cuba made its first official public announcement Monday regarding the Organization of American States' decision to withdraw its 1962 suspension from the hemispheric group: No thanks.

The announcement was published Monday in the Cuban state newspaper Granma. Cuba's retired leader Fidel Castro has waxed on for weeks calling the Washington-based international organization an ''unburied cadaver.'' But Monday marked the first time Havana specifically rejected offers to rejoin the region's diplomatic circle.

''It is an organization with a role and trajectory that Cuba repudiates,'' the statement said.

Cuba was suspended from the OAS in 1962, because of its relationship with the Soviet Union and China. Although it officially remained one of the 35 members, it has not been allowed to participate since.

This year, Cuba allies pushed hard for the country's return, saying the suspension was a moldy relic of the Cold War. Caribbean nations supported Cuba's reintegration, and Nicaragua and Venezuela joined a working group of 10 foreign ministers who made it happen -- even though it was clear Cuba was not interested.

The suspension was reversed last week at the organization's general Assembly in San Pedro Sula.

''Cuba isn't interested in going back to the OAS,'' said Alex Main, an advisor for the Venezuelan government. ''This wasn't about the OAS, it was about the assertion of Latin American sovereignty. It is primarily symbolic.''

Two countries that pushed hard for the measure, Venezuela and Nicaragua, are members of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, known as ALBA, a regional integration group of leftist leaders. Main said the ALBA nations agree that the OAS is ''irrelevant'' given that alternative regional groups have developed since the '62 suspension.

In a series of editorials dubbed ''The Shameful History of the OAS,'' Cuba last month blasted the OAS for playing a role in the 1965 invasion of the Dominican Republic. In that case, the OAS had a peace-keeping force made up of soldiers from other Latin American countries, which Cuba calls a ''collective intervention in one country.''

The organization, Cuba argues, also supported the 1961 U.S. invasion at the Bay of Pigs.

''Ever since the triumph of the revolution, the Organization of American States has taken an active part in support of Washington's policy of hostility toward Cuba,'' the statement published Monday said.

''They are looking for pretexts. Now Cuba is choosing to continue as a pariah in the region,'' said Human Rights Watch Americas director José Miguel Vivanco. ''Given the choice to participate in the region or continue to violate human rights at home, they prefer to violate human rights.''

OAS Secretary General José Manuel Insulza was traveling and did not issue any response, his spokeswoman said from Washington.

At the U.S. State Department's behest, the official resolution readmitting Cuba to the OAS says the next step should be Cuba's, and that the hemisphere's last communist country should abide by the group's ''purposes, practices and principles.'' The wording was an effort to stem critics who argue that Cuba's human rights record and one-party rule should prohibit it from joining the OAS, which promotes democracy.