TRADE-CUBA/US: Havana Rejects Half-Measures in Easing of Embargo

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Oct 6 2000 (IPS) - Cuba announced Thursday that it will not engage in any transactions with the United States – even if Congress partially lifts the trade embargo on food and medicine – until Washington removes all of the sanctions that have been in effect for nearly four decades.

“The real solution is the normalisation of relations between the two countries and the lifting… of the blockade,” declared the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations, while in Washington the final phase of congressional debate unfolds on legislation that would ease restrictions on sales of food and medicine to the island.

This possibility, though with certain conditions, is included as a provision in an agricultural appropriations bill, which a US House-Senate conference committee expects to take a final look at in the next few days.

The US-imposed embargo bans all economic and trade relations with Cuba, which has put the island 15 years behind in development and has meant 70 billion dollars in losses, according to Cuban officials.

The US Senate and House of Representatives both passed bills in July that would allow the sale of food and medicine to Cuba. They then designated negotiators to draft the final version of the legislation.

The embargo-lifting law would also benefit North Korea, Iran, Libya and Sudan. But in Cuba’s case, it bans both government or private US financing of sales, which in practice would make any trade movement impossible, given that a decade of economic crisis has left the island short on cash.

In addition, any company interested in trade with Cuba would have to obtain a special permit from the US government.

On another front, the bill would make current bans on US citizens’ travel to Cuba into law, unless the travellers obtain prior authorisation from the US government or have been invited by a non-US group with all expenses paid.

“This proposal has nothing to do with the constructive amendments (promoted) with broad support in Congress” by sectors that increasingly question the sanctions against Cuba, says the island’s Ministry of Foreign Relations.

The ministry’s communiqué accuses Cuban-American lawmakers and Republican Party leaders of strong-arming the debate in Congress in order to “impose” their own plan, which would annul any of the positive steps included in the original bill.

The bill, as it is, leaves the blockade intact, according to Havana, with a US market that would remain closed for Cuban goods and services, and would block all types of universally recognised forms of foreign trade, including financing and air and sea transport.

Congressional supporters of a trade opening between Cuba and the United States maintain that the nearly four decades of the embargo have done nothing to encourage democracy on the socialist island, and that, on the contrary, a planned 750 million-dollar food purchase by Havana could be “a powerful instrument” of change.

Richard Bell, spokesman for US rice producers, said last month that as a result of the blockade his country had lost a market in Cuba that would represent 50 percent of all US rice exports.

According to his calculations, the island has imported 8.5 million tonnes of rice since 1962 – when the embargo went into effect -, which could have meant 3.1 billion dollars in revenue for the United States.

US business leaders have said they may turn to foreign banks in order to get around the lack of credits available at home for their future trade deals with Cuba.

Nevertheless, the Fidel Castro government affirms that if “this legislative bill is approved under these discriminatory and humiliating conditions, Cuban will not engage in any commercial transaction with the United States.”