Latin America

on a live national broadcast, carried both on Cuban radio and TV, and printed in full in Cuban newspapers.

Fidel Castro also left a standing invitation for Jimmy Carter to visit Cuban medical research laboratories any time he would care to come, bringing as many scientists, researchers as preferred.

No doubt he was aware of the obnoxious charge the Republicans started when they heard Carter was accepting the invitation, claiming that Cubans were creating dual-use chemicals which could be used as weapons of mass destruction, as well! Immediately before Jimmy Carter was scheduled to go to Havana, John Bolton made these obnoxious, stupid claims in a speech at the Heritage Foundation; Here's an article I grabbed, and there are other sources people can quickly find and check for more information:

APRIL 25, 2005
John Bolton: the Undiplomatic Diplomat
BY GARY LEUPP

Boston, Mass.

John Bolton, an evil man, looks headed for a fall. But will he, foaming at the mouth, fall for the right reasons? On May 6, 2002 Bolton, then Undersecretary of State for Arms Control, in a speech to the rightwing Heritage Foundation claimed that Cuba had a program to produce offensive biological weapons. The Bush administration, he declared, “believes Cuba has at least a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort,” and has “provided dual-use biotechnology to other rogue states.” His talk, entitled “Beyond the Axis of Evil” (recall that the term had been introduced just three months earlier by President Bush in his State of the Union rant), followed charges by anti-Castro Cuban-American organizations that a joint Cuba-Iran pharmaceutical research venture was actually a front for the development of such weapons. The press made a big deal of the talk, the shameless neocon groupie Judith Miller of the New York Times reporting, “Bush administration officials report that the United States believes that Cuba has been experimenting with anthrax and other deadly biological pathogens.”

Cuba, proud of its advanced biotech- and genetic-engineering programs that provide medicines and vaccines at small cost to many Third World countries, called the accusations “vile.” Fidel Castro, planning to host former President Jimmy Carter on a Cuba from May 12 to 17, labeled the allegation “an absolute lie” and offered Carter “together with any experts of [his] choosing” “free and complete access” to any of Cuba’s science centers.

After visiting Cuba’s Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Carter stated, “With some degree of reluctance I would also like to comment on the allegation of bioterrorism. I do this because these allegations were made, maybe not coincidentally, just before our visit to Cuba.”

He said that U.S. intelligence officials had given him extensive briefings before his visit and that they had told him they had no evidence Cuba was either producing biological weapons or helping other countries to do so. “I asked them specifically, on more than one occasion: ‘Is there any evidence that Cuba has been involved in sharing any information to any other country on Earth that could be used for terrorist purposes?’ And the answer from our experts on intelligence was ‘no.’ ”

On May 15, the day after Carter’s remarks, Secretary of State Colin Powell (who has recently opined Bolton’s UN appointment would be “problematic”) told reporters, “We didn’t say [Cuba] actually had some weapons, but [that] it has the capacity and capability to conduct such research.” The Cuban Foreign Ministry noted with satisfaction in a statement published in Granma, entitled rather cutely “Colin Powell Recognizes that Bolton Lied,” “We appreciate the efforts of Secretary of State Colin Powell to help clear up what happened.” We haven’t heard much about those bioweapons since. Instead we hear of the nefarious presence of Cuban doctors in the self-sacrificing spirit of Che Guevara, providing medical care in countries like Venezuela and (Aristide’s) Haiti and (as Bolton would have us believe) by their very presence promoting anti-Americanism in such countries.

More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2005/04/25/john-bolton-the-undiplomatic-diplomat/