Peter Kornbluh meets w/Alan Gross - American jailed in Cuba wants US to sign 'non-belligerency pact' [View all]

[flamingdem]

http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/02/15620342-american-jailed-in-cuba-wants-us-to-sign-non-belligerency-pact-to-speed-release

Peter Kornbluh directs the Cuba Documentation Project and the Chile Documentation Project at the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org), a public interest research center located at George Washington University (Washington, DC). He is co-author of The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History (New Press), author of The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability (New Press) and co-author of a forthcoming book on the untold history of dialogue between the United States and Cuba.

HAVANA, Cuba — Three years after he was arrested in Havana, jailed American contractor Alan Gross is asking the U.S. government to sign a "non-belligerency pact" with Cuba as a first step toward negotiating his release, according to a Cuba policy analyst who just visited him.

Peter Kornbluh , right, stands with Alan Gross, in a picture taken on Kornbluh's iPhone by a guard during his visit to the Havana prison where Gross is being held.

Peter Kornbluh, a Cuba specialist at the National Security Archives, a nonprofit research center in Washington, met with Gross for four hours on Wednesday at the military hospital in Havana where the contractor is being held. He said Gross appeared "extremely thin" — he has lost over 100 pounds since his arrest —and dispirited.

"He’s angry, he’s frustrated, he’s dejected — and he wants his own government to step up" and negotiate, said Kornbluh. "His message is that the United States and Cuba have to sit down and have a dialogue without preconditions. … He told me that the first meeting should result in a non-belligerency pact being signed between the United States and Cuba."