Weekly Report - 20 January 2004

There are still more than four months to go before US Secretary of State Colin Powell submits to the White House the blueprint for Cuba's post-Castro `transition', but already some of its most ominous findings, reflecting a worst-case scenario, have been given a public airing. As put by Andrew Natsios, administrator of USAID, the transition carries with it `a real possibility of a complex emergency [with] a high risk of chaotic migration.'