Havana rum punch-up

Castro's order to resume production of Cuban Bacardi was part of a wider speech attacking the US embargoes

By Daniel Schweimler in Havana

Cubans say that their rum lubricates and encourages friendship, but it seems to be having the opposite affect in the long-running dispute between the communist island and their enemy to the north - the United States.

The Cuban president, Fidel Castro, has ordered Cuban distilleries to start producing Bacardi-brand rums for sale abroad.

We have given instructions for our industry to start producing Bacardi, because it is ours... and there are a lot more things we can do to respond to banditry and abuse.

Fidel Castro

The move is in retaliation for Bacardi's plans to start marketing Cuba's most well-known brand of rum, Havana Club, for sale in the United States.

"We have given instructions for our industry to start producing Bacardi, because it is ours... and there are a lot more things we can do to respond to banditry and abuse," President Castro said.

"So we will then benefit from the millions that they have spent on advertising."

President Castro is not just angry that the US is, as he sees it, stealing Cuban's brands. He also says the Cubans make a better rum.

Bacardi made in Cuba in the1860s as a by-product of the sugar industry which is still one of the main industries on the island

Courts in the United States ruled in 1999 that Bacardi Rum, owned by a Cuban-exile family now based in Bermuda, could distribute rum using the Havana Club name, because their distilleries were nationalised after Fidel Castro's revolution in 1959.

The Havana Club brand, as thousands of holidaymakers to the Caribbean island will testify, is internationally recognised as Cuban.

The rum is produced in Cuba and has been marketed internationally by France's Pernod-Ricard since 1994, selling up to 38m bottles in direct competition with Bacardi.

But, as a Cuban-made product it cannot be sold in the United States under the terms of the 40-year-old US trade embargo on Cuba.

The French firm lost a case against Bacardi in a US court and with European Union support has taken the issue to the World Trade Organisation.

Bacardi's owners are important financial contributors to the US-based Cuban exile movement that opposes the communist government in Havana, and has pushed legislation like the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which aims to strengthen the embargo.

Bacardi was first produced in Cuba in the1860s as a by-product of the sugar industry, which is still, along with tourism, one of the main industries on the island.

In 1995, Bacardi registered the Havana Club name in the United States after buying the rights from the original Cuban owner - whose trademark Castro's government also confiscated in 1960 - and began producing its own Havana Club rum made in the Bahamas.

The row over rum is merely the latest in the long-running battle between the United States and Cuba.

President Castro's order to resume production of Cuban Bacardi was part of a wider speech attacking the US embargo against the island.

He said the US should pay Cuba billions of dollars in compensation for damage the embargo had caused to the Cuban economy.