Prensa Latina - Translation by HaitiAnalysis

The Dominican Republic and Haiti requested Cuba's support for determining the cause of numerous fires in their countries, sources said today at the Cuban Ministry of the Interior (MININT).

Both Caribbean countries requested technical assistance from Havana to establish the reasons for the fires, said Lieutenant Colonel Manuel Lama, head of the Corps of Rangers MININT in statements quoted by the National Information Agency.

Dominican experts preferred collaboration with Cuba in this field, rather than that offered by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which had already developed the strategy in case the nation was exposed.

Lame attributed this fact to the proximity between the two islands and similar features, in addition to which Cuba plays the temporary Secretariat of the Network for Cooperation in Fire Management in the Caribbean, founded in Santo Domingo in 2006.

According to figures from the Organization of the United Nations Food and Agriculture (FAO), the fire generated by humans annually cause losses of 20 to 40 million hectares of tropical forests in the world.