WASHINGTON: Amid rising tensions over Georgia, US officials are increasingly concerned that Russia is moving to rebuild one of the most dangerous features of the old Soviet Union's security structure - its alliance with Cuba.Moscow has been signalling it wants to restore a relationship with Havana that included not only economic ties, but military and intelligence co-operation.The relationship brought the world to the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, when Russia secretly installed nuclear missiles on the island. It ended when a weakened, post-Soviet Russia finally closed a massive electronic intelligence complex in Lourdes near Havana in 2001.Russia "has strategic ties to Cuba again, or, at least, that's where they're going," a senior US official said recently.
WASHINGTON: Amid rising tensions over Georgia, US officials are increasingly concerned that Russia is moving to rebuild one of the most dangerous features of the old Soviet Union's security structure - its alliance with Cuba.
Moscow has been signalling it wants to restore a relationship with Havana that included not only economic ties, but military and intelligence co-operation.
The relationship brought the world to the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, when Russia secretly installed nuclear missiles on the island. It ended when a weakened, post-Soviet Russia finally closed a massive electronic intelligence complex in Lourdes near Havana in 2001.
Russia "has strategic ties to Cuba again, or, at least, that's where they're going," a senior US official said recently.
