POLITICS-U.S.: Ease Cuban Embargo say Ex-Lawmakers

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Feb 23 1999 (IPS) - A bipartisan group of former U.S. lawmakers wants President Bill Clinton to lift all restrictions on the sale of food and medicines to Cuba and encourage more people- to-people exchanges with the Caribbean island.

The seven-man group of Republicans and Democrats, which spent five days in Cuba last month, said Tuesday that Clinton’s recent moves to ease the 38-year-old trade embargo, announced Jan. 6, did not go far enough.

Furthermore these moves showed a “schizophrenic approach” to Havana which did not serve US interests, the group said.

At the same time, the former politicians assailed Cuban President Fidel Castro for frustrating hopes that his government would permit greater freedom after the historic visit of Pope John Paul II to the island 13 months ago.

“There are no human rights and freedom in Cuba,” said Robert Kasten, ex-chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee. “If anything, the dissidents and independent journalists that we met said there had been no change (since the pope’s visit)…even a crack down.”

Nonetheless, Washington should do more to reach out to the Cuban people and remove all bureaucratic restrictions on people-to- people exchanges and on the sale of food, agricultural equipment, medicines and medical equipment to Cuba according to a 25-page report by the US Association of Former Members of Congress.

The report came out six weeks after Clinton took limited steps to ease the Cuban embargo. But he also rejected pressure to appoint a bipartisan commission to undertake the first comprehensive review of US relations toward Cuba since the embargo was imposed in 1961, two years after Castro took power.

Republicans, including former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Lawrence Eagleburger, suggested that such a commission would offer Clinton the “cover” he needed to lift the embargo without fear of political retaliation by right-wing forces.

Staunch anti-Castro forces, led by the Miami-based Cuban- American National Foundation (CANF), strongly opposed the idea.

In rejecting the proposal, Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, signalled that any rapprochement with Cuba before the 2000 elections would be very limited. Florida and New Jersey, where anti-Castro Cuban-American are concentrated, are among the ten states with the most electoral votes.

Instead, Clinton announced the expansion of direct charter flights to Cuba, the resumption of direct mail service, the approval of sales of food and agricultural supplies to Cuba’s tiny private sector, and permission for US citizens and non- governmental organisations (NGOs) to send up to 1200 dollars a year to individual Cubans and NGOs.

While the administration depicted the moves as a”major advance in our effort to reach out to the Cuban people,” many Cuban and foreign-policy specialists who favoured a more open policy denounced them as timid and a missed opportunity.

Havana itself called them a “deceptive manoeuvre” – intended both to deflect growing pressure to lift the embargo and to undermine the Castro government.

Since then, the U.S. media has reported an upsurge in anti-US rhetoric by top Cuban leaders – including Castro who denounced the Jan. 6 measures as a “fraud” – and the start of a new crackdown against Cuban dissidents.

The events of the past six weeks do not bode well for the recommendations put forward by the former lawmakers who, in addition to Kasten, included several prominent Republicans. But former Democratic Representative James Symington, stressed that any change in Cuba policy would be an incremental process.

“Eventually, there will be a level of understanding that will seep out to the other 48 states (besides Florida and New Jersey),” Symington said.

he added that virtually every delegation which has actually visited Cuba in recent years has returned with similar recommendations.

The group, whose report on its last visit in 1996 prompted unsuccessful efforts in Congress to exempt food and medicine from the embargo, called for general licenses to be issued for educational, cultural, humanitarian, religious and athletic exchanges between the two countries as part of an effort to “greatly expand” two-way traffic.

It also called for the approval of direct, scheduled flights between the United States and Cuba or for foreign carriers to make be able to make stops in the United States en route to Cuba.

The group urged the removal of all restrictions on the sales of medicine, medical supplies, food and agricultural inputs – a goal which also pursued aggressively by a coalition of leading business and humanitarian groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

In addition, commercial shipping carrier companies should be authorised to make regular delivery stops in Cuba, and normal sea transportation permitted to facilitate the delivery of gifts of food and medicines, the group said.

Similarly, U.S. telecommunications companies should be permitted to explore possibilities for establishing more open and diverse communications, including e-mail, and other hi-tech links, between the two countries.

“Telecommunications is the key to democracy in Cuba,” said former Republican Sen. Larry Pressler.

“The United States should exhibit a greater sense of confidence that increased contacts between the United States and Cuba will work to the advantage of the development of a more open society rather than to help Castro,” according to the report.

The group also called for a review of broadcasting by Radio Marti, a US government station beamed at Cuba, to determine whether it is meeting professional standards of news reporting and by its sister station TV-Marti, successfully jammed by Havana since its inception.

“This is the second Association trip to Cuba in which the delegates found no independent Cuban citizens who had seen TV Marti,” the group said.

Recent suggestions by the Castro government that it was prepared to discuss a settlement of outstanding property claims arising from expropriations after the 1959 revolution should also be pursued, according to the group.

POLITICS-U.S.: Ease Cuban Embargo say Ex-Lawmakers

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Feb 23 1999 (IPS) - A bipartisan group of former U.S. lawmakers wants President Bill Clinton to lift all restrictions on the sale of food and medicines to Cuba and encourage more people- to-people exchanges with the Caribbean island.
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