CUBA-UNITED STATES: Wary Eyes Across the Straits

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Jul 6 1995 (IPS) - While experts claim the United States has relaxed its policy towards Cuba, here on the island a wary eye is being cast across the Straits of Florida to determine Washington’s real motives.

Old suspicions die hard: policies being trumpeted as evidence of rapprochement by the U.S. administration signify no change to the Cuban foreign ministry.

Some local officials believe all that’s happening is that Washington is moderating its language, and that President Bill Clinton has his eyes on domestic concerns.

Contact between the two nations entered a new phase last September when their representatives sought to negotiate a solution to problems posed by Cuban boat people – emigrants who flee the Caribbean nation in rickety vessels.

A massive exodus ended with thousands of boat people being picked up off the coast of the United States and held on the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In negotiations to end a faceoff, Washington promised to issue 20,000 visas to emigrating Cubans every year.

Some time later, in a surprise move, the two sides announced (May 2) the terms of a new migration agreement that would mean repatriation for all Cubans attempting to enter the United States illegally.

That measure smothered wild accusations from parts of the Cuban migrant population in Miami that Clinton was a “communist”. It also satisfied other sections of the U.S. electorate who would like to see a reduction in the number of Cuban immigrants.

Analysts have also read as a gesture of conciliation, the recent arrest by Cuban authorities of Robert Vesco, a fugitive from U.S. justice who has been living in Cuba since the mid-1960s.

Vesco is wanted in the United States in connection with a 224 million dollar fraud. He had lived in Cuba for over 10 years before his arrest.

The United States claimed there has been no negotiation on this issue. Havana said no extradition was planned.

One European diplomat in Havana said Clinton was trying to pander to the sentiments of the Cuban emigrant community in Miami, even more than the Cuban government.

Cuban experts claimed the United States was refusing to show too many signs of goodwill for fear of being pressured to end the embargo imposed on Cuba in the early 1960s.

However, Gillian Gunn, Cuban affairs expert at the University of Georgetown in the United States, said Clinton’s recent moderate tone “suggests the possibility of a thaw in relations with Cuba.”

While Clinton officially supports the current embargo, he has opposed a bill to strengthen sanctions against the island. White House sources have said he is considering ending the ban on emigres sending remittances to their families back home, imposed in Aug. 1994.

In June, Washington proclaimed its intention of making private sector contact with Cuba more flexible “to encourage a fall of communism similar to that occurring in Eastern Europe.”

This “tolerance plan” would allow national companies to open branches in Cuba, encouraging all kinds of cultural, professional, intellectual and religious exchanges, and a peaceful transition to representative democracy according to White House adviser for Cuban Affairs, Richard Nuccio.

Experts from the Cuban United States Studies Centre said that the stumbling bloc of bilateral relations was no longer the socialist nature of the Cuban administration.

Soraya Castro explained that since the soviet bloc collapsed, “the island has stopped being a threat to the United States national security” meaning that the conflict is now solely based on the ideological argument of sovereignty versus hegemony, she said.