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Cuban diplomatic sources inform that over a hundred doctors from the island give aid to the victims of the natural disasters lashing several Bolivian regions that are caused by the El Nino phenomena.

Fatal Floods Drench Bolivia

“We have more than 100 doctors working with the evacuees and victims of the floods and rains and will remain until necessary,” Rafael Dausa, Cuban ambassador, informed in a communique released here.

Cuban doctors who have been here since January, immediately answered the call to help rural and native communities, particularly the departments of Santa Cruz and Beni as well as El Chaco in Cochabamba. They will remain in 20 evacuation camps offering medical aid.

On February 2, 2006 the Cuban “Henry Reeve” Medical Brigade arrived in Bolivia in answer to an emergency that affected more than 40,000 families.

In the past year the Cuban government donated 20 hospitals, 11 eye centers and 564 tons of medicines and medical equipment for the attention to the population.

To date, the doctors have given attention to 3.5 million citizens of this nation saving 4,520 persons and performing 64,687 eye operations.

The Jose Marti Solidarity Project World Council, made up of academics from several countries, is due to analyze in Zaragoza this weekend the labor of international promotion of Marti thinking.

The information was given to Prensa Latina by Hector Hernandez Pardo, coordinator of that organization and Cuban ambassador at the UN Science, Culture and Education Fund (UNESCO).

The meeting was presided over by Armando Hart Davalos, director of Cuba s Marti Program Office, and attended by Federico Mayor Zaragoza, former UNESCO general director, Grabriela Andrade, social development secretary of the Michoacan government in Mexico, and French deputy Oliver Giscard D Estaing, among others.

The event’s agenda includes a report on arrangements for the 2nd International Conference “For World Equilibrium,” sponsored by UNESCO, will be run in Havana in January 2008.

The Council, Hernandez Pardo explained, is expected to analyze growth and development of Marti departments in universities, the creation of the Project’s national and regional chapters, and the Council s expansion and working methods and issue a Final Declaration.

Members of the World Council are due to lay a wreath, on February 24, 112th anniversary of the beginning of independence war led by Marti and the Cuban revolutionary Party, at the plaque that recalls the Cuban Hero s stay in Zaragoza.

Cuban Vice Minister of Culture Ruben del Valle started a visit to Ecuador on Wednesday in order to hold talks with government authorities and promote the 5th International Congress of Culture and Development, to be held in Havana capital.

Del Valle arrived in Quito on Tuesday evening and will meet today with the Ecuadorian minister of Culture, Antonio Preciado, to review bilateral agreements and invite him to the cultural event in the Cuban capital.

The Cuban vice minister will also hold talks with maestro Edgar Palacio, who is the founder and director of the orchestra of the National Music System for Children with Mental Disabilities (SINMUNE).

Palacio plans to participate in the Culture and Development event, in which he will present a paper on the role of music in the rehabilitation of children with Downs syndrome.

Also on Wednesday, it is expected that the Cuban visitor meet with Marco Antonio Rodriguez, president of the Ecuadorian House of Culture “Benjamin Carrion,” and its board of directors.

The Cuban official will travel to Guaranda, capital of Bolivar province, and Puyo, Pastaza, on Friday and Saturday to meet with authorities of the cultural sector and promote the Congress.

Jaka M. Mwambi, Deputy Secretary General of the Tanzanian party Chama Cha Mapinduzi, wished a prompt recovery for President Fidel Castro, convalescent from complicated intestinal surgery.

“The name of Fidel Castro is great in Tanzania, and our country loves him as much as Cubans,” stated the leader during a meeting held Monday with representatives from the Cuban-African Friendship Association at the island’s Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP).

The delegation, visiting the Caribbean nation since February 11, was welcomed by ICAP vice president Buenaventura Reyes and Cuban-African Friendship Association president Rodolfo Puenteferro.

“Relations between the two States,” Mwambi noted, “are excellent, because they started from the personal friendship between Presidents Julius Nyerere and Fidel Castro, strengthened by Cuba’s support for independence of several African peoples.”

Visitors also met with members of the Cuban-African Friendship Association and praised a statue of Julius Nyerere, by eminent Cuban sculptor Alberto Lescay, which will be placed in the capital s African Leaders Park.

Former Spanish President Jose Maria Aznar not only sent police officers to Guantanamo naval base, but also intelligence agents to interrogate prisoners with US authorization, El Pais daily revealed Tuesday.

The daily provides evidence that only two months after the US began locking up detainees from Afghanistan and Pakistan, Spanish intelligence agents travelled to the base.

The accomplished goal was to interrogate several prisoners of the US government, as confirmed in the telegrams the foreign ministry of the Aznar government received since March 2002.

The information reads that the interviews with the prisoners were also in the presence of a US military representative and members of the intelligence service.

Abderrahaman Hamed (born in Ceuta), and Redwan Abdusalam, whose real name is Lahcen Ikassrien, a Moroccan residing in Spain, were the prisoners interrogated by the Spanish intelligence.

A US general in charge of the Guantanamo US naval base, an illegally occupied Cuban territory, said since the beginning that the visit was far from being a diplomatic one.

The intelligence videoed all the interviews and gave copies to US authorities, as they had requested, according to the official reports.

More interrogations followed the first visit to Guantanamo. The Aznar government never told Congress that intelligence agents, along with officials from the interior ministry, visited the supposed Spanish prisoners.