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Cuba puts WikiLeaks disclosures online in Spanish

Cuba will translate and publish more than 2,000 US diplomatic WikiLeaks cables that pertain to the Communist-ruled island in a bid to highlight US “imperialist” policy, the official Cubadebate website said Thursday.

A “Cablegates” page reached through a portal on cubadebate.cu includes Spanish translations of classified cables disclosed by WikiLeaks, especially those sent by the US Interests Section in Havana to the US State Department.

Of the 2,080 cables leaked by the self-described whistleblower website in which Cuba is mentioned, 507 were sent by the interest section, and to date only 62 have been made public.

Cubadebate will publish all the cables over time, it said, and on Thursday opened the series with seven US Interests Section messages it said “prove the links between the US government and (Cuba’s) so-called internal dissidence.”

They also show how the United States favors Cuba’s “counter-revolutionary bloggers in its attempts to organize networks of young people to subvert the Cuban revolution,” Cubadebate added.

In some of the Wikileaks cables appearing Thursday, US Interests Section mission chief Jonathan Farrar apparently describes Cuba’s opposition leadership as aging, divided, concerned with making money and disconnected from Cuba’s every-day reality.

Cuban President Raul Castro last week said the treasure trove of some 250,000 US diplomatic cables being disclosed by WikiLeaks shows that Washington still acts as the “world’s policeman” despite US President Barack Obama’s “friendly rhetoric.”

Cubadebate.cu is a regular sounding board for Castro’s brother, Cuban revolutionary founder Fidel Castro, himself the focus of some of the leaked cables.

One of them said Fidel Castro nearly died in 2006 for refusing to have a colostomy when he fell ill before handing over power to his brother.