CUBA: US Overtures Viewed as Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Oct 11 1995 (IPS) - The recent moves by U.S. President Bill Clinton to promote a peaceful transition toward “a free and open society” in Cuba, has not meant any change in Washington’s Cuban policy, according to authorities here.

While many observers welcomed the measures as a sign of flexibility, the official Cuban circles view them as “somewhat different, but with the same essence” as previous policy.

U.S. media will now be able to open offices in Cuba, U.S. non-governmental organisations (NGOs) will be able to carry out activities here, and information-sharing trips focusing on the areas of education, religion and human rights will be encouraged.

But according to Ricardo Alarcon, president of the Cuban parliament and considered the Caribbean island nation’s expert on relations with the United States, that country “has made no moves up to now toward anything rational or logical.”

The new measures announced by Clinton will not directly affect the 35-year-old economic embargo against Cuba, nor will they abolish the sanctions implemented in August 1994 when thousands of Cubans sought to reach the United States in precarious boats and rafts.

Alarcon, who headed the Cuban delegation in immigration talks between the two countries, pointed out that the Clinton administration has set even tougher restrictions on visits by Cuban-Americans.

More than one-and-a-half million Cubans live in the United States. Previously they were granted permission to travel in cases defined as “humanitarian emergencies”, a category that has now been tightened to “extreme humanitarian emergencies” – meaning the death or serious illness of a direct family member.

In a speech to the NGO “Freedom House”, Clinton said he would encourage a greater sharing of ideas between the two countries in order to promote a peaceful transition in Cuba toward “a free and open society.”

Experts at the Centre of U.S. Studies said the new measures are a further application of the so-called “tolerance plan” or Law for Democracy in Cuba, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1992.

What is also known as the “Torricelli Law” was designed to stiffen the blockade but make private contacts with Cuba more flexible in order to “promote the development of civil society and a fall of communism similar to that which occurred in eastern Europe.

“The aim is to achieve in the terrain of ideas what was not achieved with a three decade-long blockade,” a Cuban Foreign Ministry official said.

Local observers said Cuban professionals will be hardest-hit by the latest measures announced by Clinton, because Cuban officials could retaliate by setting restrictions on information-sharing trips.

“There are already cases of people who have received their visa for a professional meeting in the United States, having suffered delay by Cuba in issuing an exit permit,” a university professor told IPS.

Alarcon declared that NGOs in the United States focussed on providing material aid to local groups opposed to the Cuban government. And in spite of the growing interest expressed among certain U.S. economic sectors in investing in Cuba, Clinton gave assurances that he woulk stiffen the embargo, apparently to placate the farthest right factions within the Republican Party and hardline factions of the Cuban exile community in Miami.

Official Cuban sources said that President Fidel Castro told a group of U.S. entrepreneurs last week that what Cuba needs “are products, not ideas.”

The presence of 65 senior U.S. executives in Havana had been interpreted as an indication of the interest sparked in that country by Cuba’s current wave of economic reforms, which includes an opening to foreign capital.

Last year, more than 200 U.S. entrepreneurs visited the island nation, 60 of whom signed letters of intent for future business deals.

But a majority agreed that the entry of U.S. capital would be impossible until the economic, financial and commercial embargo was lifted.