Cuba charges U.S. boosting radio, TV broadcasts into Cuba

HAVANA -- Cuba charged Friday that the U.S. government was stepping up radio and television broadcasts into the communist island, saying that the transmissions violate international law and the island's sovereignty.

The Foreign Ministry said it had delivered a verbal protest to the top American diplomat here. The U.S. State Department in Washington denied that such broadcasts violated any laws or international norms.

"This week's transmissions did not, nor will they, contravene any of our international obligations," a U.S. State Department official said in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity. "This was considered carefully."

Cuba's Foreign Ministry said in a statement in the Communist Party daily Granma that it was protesting to the International Telecommunications Union, which oversees radio frequencies worldwide.

"Cuba will denounce the scaled up radio and television aggressions from the United States," the statement said.

Cuba has long complained that both Radio Marti and the newer TV Marti, both U.S. operated, are used by the United States to send anti-Cuba propaganda to the communist island.

Cuba's Foreign Ministry also complains that such broadcasts interfer with local programming but says that it had successfully blocked most of them.

For many years, authorities here have used transmitter antennas to interrupt frequencies used by Radio Marti, which broadcasts in the Spanish language.

The Foreign Ministry claimed that the U.S. government on Tuesday began using four more new frequencies to beam Radio Marti broadcasts into the Caribbean nation. At the same time, TV Marti beamed a more powerful television signal into the country.

Cuban exile groups in Miami have been pressuring Washington to spend more money on the Radio and TV Marti programming, which it accuses of airing transmissions critical of Cuba. The programming includes music, news and talk shows hosted by exile leaders.

The powerful exile lobby group, the Cuban American National Foundation, sent the White House a letter earlier this month urging the administration to support a peaceful regime change in Cuba through strict enforcement of economic sanctions against the island and increase funding to opposition groups and Radio and TV Marti.

Cubans consulted on the island say they have never seen the TV Marti broadcasts, a program the American government launched in 1990 as a companion to its Radio Marti broadcasts, which began in 1985.

Together, the broadcasts cost about $25 million in U.S. funds annually.

The programs are frequent targets of policy reviews and audits in the United States, where they are often criticized as being a waste of taxpayers' money because their audiences are small or nonexistent.

Radio Marti also broadcasts via shortwave, the easiest way to tune in on the island.