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President
Pacheco
will not resign over alleged Taiwan finance
scandal
President
Abel Pacheco said he would not resign despite a
growing scandal over illegal contributions to
his 2002 election campaign, some which allegedly
originated in Taiwan.
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is "irresponsible" to talk about
resignation, he said. "If I decided
to resign there would not be a dime of
foreign investment and the country would
sink."
Pacheco's government has been on the
defensive in the last weeks after a
special legislative commission discovered
secret accounts which with he financed the
campaign that swept him into office in
April 2002. |
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The accounts uncovered up to now received
deposits of up to US500,000 dollars from foreign
companies.
According to La Nacion newspaper, two
Taiwanese companies allegedly sent Pacheco's
campaign 500,000-dollar checks written on the
Taiwan-based International Bank of China.
The San Jose daily said the checks were
issued by Sunshine Co. Ltd. and Pacific Company.
They were payable to Pacheco's rightist
Christian Democratic Unity Party, La Nacion
said.
Costa Rica and Taiwan have close trade and
political ties.
Foreign campaign contributions violate the
country's constitution, and by law political
parties must disclose the source of their
contributions.
In the latest twist in the ongoing scandal,
two Taiwanese business persons, Pablo Li and
Anita Vemon, and Salvadoran businessman Jose
Trinidad Sosa are wanted for contributing some
10 million dollars to the Pacheco campaign.
"I have never done anything illegal or
immoral," said Pacheco, who campaigned on
an anti-corruption theme. "If being
ignorant of something amounts to guilt, well my
God . . ."
Pacheco said Li was a former president of the
Bank of Cathay in Costa Rica, as well as
president of the Taiwanese Chamber of Commerce
of Latin America and Taiwanese Chamber of
Commerce of Costa Rica
North American
Accused of Celebrating Mass Illegally
Tuesday,
representatives of Casa Alianza denounced before
the Ministerio Publico, North American, Alfredo
Prado, who has apparently been holding religious
celebrations illegally.
Though Prado does not have the endorsement of the
Catholic church, executive director of Casa
Alianza, Bruce Haddis, assured that the American celebrates masses, baptisms and marriages in a supposed sanctuary located in San Isidro
de Grecia, a community west of San José.
The accusations against Prado are for usurpation
of authority and fraud.
The preoccupation of Casa Alianza against the
man, is the archdioceses of San Antonio, Texas,
suspended Prado as priest for some years due to
accusations of sexual abuses.
The case is in the hands of the public
prosecutor in Alajuela Province.
Cuba's
Libraries Founder Fights Castro From Afar
By
GEORGE GEDDA
Ramon Colas has
a clear memory of the day when a few words from
Fidel Castro changed his life.
Colas, long
an opponent of Cuba's revolution, recalled that
Castro was asked by a reporter in early 1998
whether there were any prohibited books on the
island.
"In Cuba," Castro replied,
"there are no prohibited books. What is
lacking is the money to buy them."
As Colas saw it, the response was "a
spark from God. We found in his words a fissure,
an opening, a huge pore that we could
penetrate."
He knew that the typical library in Cuba
featured the writings of Marx, Engels, Castro
and Che Guevara. The works of those with
different views — Camus, Solzhenitsyn and Adam
Smith — were not.
Colas decided to start his own public library
— albeit a modest one — at his home in the
eastern province of Las Tunas. It would be
unlike any other library on the island. >Complete
Story
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Blackout hits southern Mexico
A power outage left at least 3 million Mexicans in the southern Yucatan peninsular without electricity on Tuesday, the authorities said.
The blackout occurred before dawn in Mexico's southern states of Yucatan, Campeche, Quintana Roo and parts of Tabasco and
Chiapas.
By afternoon, power had been returned to about 80 percent of the affected area, civil protection officials said.
"The preliminary diagnosis is a flaw in a transformer in the Ticul substation (in Yucatan), which kicked into operation the peninsula's automatic protection systems," the Federal Electricity Commission said in a news release.
The fault, which automatically shut down power lines, could have been caused by lightning or a mudslide, said the Federal Electricity Commission.
The popular coastal resort of Cancun in Quintana Roo state was hardest-hit by the power loss. Many tourist centers used their own generators to keep facilities running. Cancun is to host a major World Trade Organization conference next week.
Mexican president replaces two cabinet ministers
Mexican President Vicente Fox on Tuesday replaced Energy Minister Ernesto Martens and Environment Minister Victor Lichtinger in a move to build a "more efficient, sensible and committed government."
The replacements came after Fox's acknowledgment Monday in his state-of-the-union speech of a number of shortcomings in the cabinet. He promised a harder-working government in the final
half of his administration.
The new environment minister will be Alberto Cardenas Jimenez, previously director general of the National Forestry Commission, and the new energy minister will be Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, former president of the National Action Party (PAN) and current head of the National Bank of Works and Services (Banobras), said Fox's spokesman Alfonso
Durazo.
Durazo said that the goal of the change in the Energy Ministry was to "give an impulse to the energy sector and to promote adequate reforms."
"With these changes the president gives a renewed push in substantial areas of the administration, focusing on politics as the path to more efficient, sensible and committed government,"
he said.
Fox admitted on Monday, for the first time in his three years in office, that there were problems in the cabinet, a situation that had already been much criticized by the opposition and analysts.
The two new ministers are important members of PAN, the party that served as the platform for Fox to win the presidency in 2000.
In addition, the president also replaced other senior officials.
The Undersecretary for Environmental Protection, Raul Arriaga, was replaced but his successor has not been named.
The director of Banobras will be replaced by Luis Pazos, who used to be the spokesman of the Finance Ministry.
Cardenas' post as the head of the National Forestry Commission will be covered by Manuel Reed.
The PAN leader in Mexico City, Jose Luege, will replace Jose Campillo in the Federal Environmental Protection Attorney's office.
Iranian attorneys in Argentina to discuss Jewish center bombing case
Argentine Foreign Ministry officials met Monday with a delegation of Iranian attorneys to discuss the 1994 bombing that destroyed the Jewish center in the Argentine capital, diplomatic sources confirmed Tuesday.
Sources with the Foreign Ministry said the Iranian delegation had the chance to express itself at will for over one and a half hours.
Iran suspended its economic and cultural links with Argentina after the arrest in London of a former Iranian ambassador to Argentina on Aug. 21. The arrest was made by Interpol at the request of Argentine judge Juan Galeano. The former ambassador, Hadi Soleimanpour, was accused of having links with the 1994 terrorist attack that killed 85 people and injured 200 others.
The diplomatic sources said the Iranian delegation would meet with Argentine judge Galeano shortly.
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