Cuba blames US for insect attack

HAVANA - Cuba accused the US yesterday of unleashing a plague of insects to devour crops and undermine its food supply.

HAVANA - Cuba accused the US yesterday of unleashing a plague of insects to devour crops and undermine its food supply.

In a front page story in the official Communist Party paper Granma, "Cuba reports biological aggression by the United States," the party charged a single engine "US State Department plane" overflew Matanzas province east of the capital last October and released a white or grayish substance.

Cuban agricultural authorities in December determined that a cropwrecking outbreak of the insect Thryps palmi, which had been in the Caribbean since 1985 but not reported in Cuba, was focused in the area overflown by the US plane, the report said.