FRANCE SELLS LOCOMOTIVES TO CUBA
The French firm Brissonneau confirmed a report in the May 5 New York Times that it had sold twenty diesel locomotives to Cuba's revolutionary government on three-year oredit terms underwritten by the Frenoh government,
The deal was said to involve: twenty million francs [about G4 million]. The final order may finally go up to thirty locomotives,
Henry Giniger, the Paris correspondent of the New York Times said that the deal was approved in France with "full awareness of adverse reactions in the United States, which is attempting to enforce an economic blockade of Cuba." French officials shrugged at the annoyance of the State Department, pointing out that locomotives are not on the list of "strategic" goods,
Richard I, Phillips, press officer of the State Department, said at a press conference in Washington May 5 that "oral" objeotions had been lodged by the Johnson administration against the sale but that the French had gone ahead anyway.
He denied implications made by questioners that the sale con= stituted a possibly "fatal blow! to the Us Se efforts to break down. the Cuban economy.
On May 7 Reuters reported from Havana that the Leyland Motor Co, of Britain may make another deal with the Cuban government. The company had already agreed to sell 450 buses to the Cubans, despite . frothing at the mouth in Washington,
Two Leyland workers, in Cuba for the May Day celebration, told the Havana daily El Mundo that "steps are being taken to sign a second contract for 500 more buses," This would involve £5 million Cs >14 million], Deliveries on the first order for 450 buses are expected to begin arriving in June.
Meanwhile, on the same day the sale of French locomotives to Cuba was publicly denounced by the State Department, the Associated Press reported from Washington that "fresh rumors" were circulating among counterrevolutionary Cuban exiles "that new efforts will be ~ made soon to overthrow the Castro regime."
The rumors "increasingly persistent, both in Washington and in Miami,' ' according to the Associated Press, "say that new terrorist
and sabotage attacks will be made against the Cuban regime | from with in Cuba and from without,"
The new attacks, the counterrevolutionaries were reported to be saying, “will not be launched from the United States.
"This was decided, they explain, to avoid international complications for Washington’ as well as interference by U.S. planes and ships with raiding parties,'
TEODORO MOSCOSO BOWS OUT
The announcement in Washington May 4 that Teodoro Moscoso had sent in his resignation to President Johnson as U,S.Ambassador to the ‘Inter-American Committee for the