New Chief Coming to US Interests Section in Havana - he's a "rights" expert

[magbana]

MIAMI HERALD
Rights expert to replace U.S. envoy in Cuba

Posted on Thu, May. 15, 2008

By JUAN O. TAMAYO

[e-mail]

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/534190.html

The top U.S. diplomat in Cuba, Michael Parmly, will be leaving his post and
will be replaced by a top official at the State Department's Bureau of
Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, the Department confirmed Thursday.

Jonathan D. Farrar, now acting assistant secretary at the bureau, has broad
experience in Latin America, with previous postings at the U.S. embassies in
Mexico, Belize, Paraguay and Uruguay.

State Department spokeswoman Heidi Bronke confirmed Farrar will succeed
Parmly this summer. There was no immediate word on Parmly's next assignment
after completing a normal three-year posting in Havana.

Parmly was assigned to head the U.S. Interests Section in Havana in 2005,
replacing James Cason, who had earned a reputation in his three years in
Cuba as an aggresive critic of the Fidel Castro government.

Parmly took a different style, and even Castro initially noted the
difference between him and Cason, describing Parmly's correspondence as
``respectful.''

But as time passed, Parmly appeared to wear out his welcome. In 2006, the
electricity went off at the mission for several days in what U.S. officials
called part of a deliberate Cuban harassment campaign that included
poisoning a U.S. diplomat's pet and shutting off water to the mission.

Parmly at the time said the harassment ''makes Ceaucescu's Romania look like
real amateurs,'' referring to the last and notoriously harsh communist ruler
of Romania. Castro later called Parmly a ``little gangster.''

Farrar was picked to replace Parmly because of his experience with human
rights issues, said U.S. officials who asked to remain anonymous because
Farrar's appointment must still be approved in the Senate.

He is listed as a member of the editorial staff responsible for the
2005-2006 edition of the State Department's annual report on human rights
around the world, Suporting Human Rights and Democracy. The U.S. Record.

In its lengthy Cuba section, that report says that `in Cuba, the lone
antiquated dictatorship in the hemisphere, repression against dissidents
continued, and 333 political prisoners.''

Farrar served as deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of International
Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs from 2004 to 2005 and was chief of
staff to the undersecretary of state for global affairs from 2002 to 2004.

A California native, he studied at California State Polytechnic
University-Pomona and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. He joined
the State Department in 1980 as an economics officer and is now a member of
the Senior Foreign Service.

Cuba and the United States do not have formal diplomatic relations, so their
respective missions in Havana and Washington are known as Interests
Sections.

[Judi Lynn]

1. I think people are dying for need of his help at Guantanamo, don't you? n/t