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Yahoo! News, April 19, 2003.
Cuba Sees Victory in U.N. Panel's Vote
Fri Apr 18,10:12 Pm Et . By Anita Snow, Associated Press
Writer
HAVANA - Cuba's foreign minister cried victory Friday after the U.N. Human
Rights Commission voted against condemning his country's recent crackdown on
dissidents, and Fidel Castro's government dismissed the possibility of U.S.
punitive steps.
The top United Nation rights watchdog rejected a proposed resolution
criticizing Cuba's recent moves against opponents, instead approving a milder
resolution Thursday calling for a U.N. rights monitor to visit the island.
Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque called the vote a "resonant
victory."
"The unquestionable majority vote is a clear signal from the Human
Rights Commission that Cuba has the right to apply its own laws," Perez
Roque told a news conference. "We express our profound satisfaction."
Earlier this month, Cuban tribunals sentenced 75 dissidents to prison terms
ranging from 6 to 28 years on charges they were mercenaries working with the
American government to harm the island's socialist system.
The dissidents and the U.S. government deny the accusations. The crackdown
was followed by the April 11 executions of three men convicted of the hijacking
nine days earlier of a ferry filled with passengers.
The White House said Thursday that it was considering new steps against Cuba
in response to the crackdown.
The repression "only makes our policy goal of encouraging rapid,
peaceful transition to democracy more relevant and more urgent and we ... are
willing to consider steps to advance that policy goal in this climate,"
said Claire Buchan, a spokeswoman for President Bush, declining to elaborate.
The steps reportedly could include suspending family remittances and
flights. Tens of thousands of Cuban-Americans every year take direct charter
flights, mostly from Miami, to visit relatives on the island. And the monetary
gifts are considered an important source of hard currency for this cash-starved
island, with estimates that they can total $1 billion annually.
The Cuban leadership said Friday that the nation's "economy and its
social services can resist" if Washington takes such steps.
"More than four decades of revolution have shown that our country is
capable of confronting any threat and overcoming all kinds of sinister plans,"
said an editorial in the Communist Party daily Granma.
The editorial said banning remittances would hurt retirees and other
individuals dependent on the money, but it said Cuba can take care of those hurt
"as a result of such inhuman policies."
Perez Roque accused the U.S. government of concocting the failed attempt to
condemn the communist-run island at the Human Rights Commission.
The condemnation, rejected by a 31-15 vote, expressed "deep concern
about the recent detention, summary prosecution and harsh sentencing of numerous
members of the political opposition," and called for their release.
Perez Roque said his country would not comply with the milder resolution,
which urged Cuba to accept a visit by U.N. human rights investigator, French
jurist Christine Chanet.
Peru, meanwhile, protested Cuban comments to the commission that said Peru,
Uruguay, Nicaragua and Costa Rica were "repugnant lackeys" of the
United States for presenting the milder resolution.
Peruvian Foreign Minister Allan Wagner said the comments by Cuban delegate
Juan Fernandez "are offensive to the Peruvian state, unfitting for a
diplomatic official and incompatible with Peruvian-Cuban relations,"
according to Friday's edition of Lima's El Comercio newspaper.
Wagner said that Peru gave Cuban Ambassador Rogelio Sierra the diplomatic
note of protest and added that Peru's ambassador to Cuba has been contacted for
consultations.
Cuba ordered to pay 67 million for 1961 execution of US man
Fri Apr 18, 4:03 PM ET
MIAMI (AFP) - A Florida judge ordered Cuba to pay 67 million dollars to the
family of a US citizen executed in Cuba in 1961, court sources said.
Judge Ellen Leesfield ordered Cuba to pay the widow and four sons of Howard
Anderson 40 million dollars in economic damages and 27 million for pain and
suffering.
Anderson, then a 41-year-old businessman, was arrested in Cuba in March 1961
on charges of counter-revolutionary activities.
He was executed on April 19, soon after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion,
when US-supported Cuban exiles failed to topple Fidel Castro's government.
Anderson's family filed the case against Cuba in 2002 under a 1996 US law
allowing US citizens sue foreign countries for terrorism or the murder of a US
citizen.
Cuba ignored the case and did not send a representative to court to present
a defense.
Anderson family attorney Fernando Zulueta was happy at the outcome, even
though the award is mainly symbolic since Cuba is not likely to pay.
US officials have already used some of the frozen funds belonging to the
Cuban government to pay damages to the families of pilots of the Brothers to the
Rescue anti-Castro group, shot down over the Florida straits in 1996 by Cuban
jet fighters.
Cuba crackdown stalls Congress moves to liberalize trade
Fri Apr 18,10:16 AM ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Cuba's crackdown on its opposition has bled away support
in the US Congress for lifting a decades-old US embargo against the communist
regime.
Congress has been one of the few segments of official Washington where
concerted efforts were underway to reconsider the 40-year old US policy trade
embargo.
The moves, which had been gathering steam in the past few years, are now
stalled indefinitely, analysts said.
The jailing of 78 dissidents in recent weeks, following a crackdown by Fidel
Castro (news - web sites)'s regime, and the recent ending of a moratorium on
executions has brought international protests, particularly from the United
States, even as Cuba claimed a "moral victory" after avoiding censure
by the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva on Thursday.
"The liberalization moves are not going to go anywhere," lamented
Sally Grooms Cowal, a former ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago, and long-time
Cuba watcher.
US exporters last year sent 138 million dollars' worth of goods to Cuba,
thanks to legislation passed in 2000 allowing food and medicine to be sold to
Cuba under certain conditions.
If not for the crackdown by Castro "that trade would have continued to
grow," said Cowal, who even predicted a "new Cold War" could
break out between Havana and Washington.
Cuba expert Wayne Smith of the Washington-based Center for International
Policy was equally apocalyptic in assessing how badly Cuban-American relations
have frayed.
"In the short run, things are going to get worse," he said. "I
think we're even moving toward a dangerous situation" as tensions escalate
and communication between the two nations becomes more strained.
While "a majority in Congress favor lifting the travel ban,"
according to Brian Alexander, director of the Cuba Policy Foundation in
Washington, lawmakers find themselves in "something of a holding pattern"
as they contemplate their next moves.
Massachusetts Congressman William Delahunt, who has traveled to Cuba
numerous times said lawmakers who favor normalizing relations will have to tread
carefully for the foreseeable future.
"It's a problem. It's a new obstacle. But it doesn't change anything
about the merits" of the arguments in favor of removing the embargo and
trade sanctions, said Delahunt, who is a founder of a 50-member working group in
the House of Representatives that has pushed for expanded trade with and travel
to Cuba.
Just a few weeks ago the Senate formed its own bipartisan working group on
US Cuba policy -- also with an eye toward lifting the embargo.
Calling sanctions "ineffective," five Democratic and five
Republican senators wrote to Senate leaders that: "Developing a
relationship with the Cuban people ... is the only way to influence the peaceful
transition to democracy and a market-oriented economy."
Elsewhere in Congress, the tone has already turned harsher.
Congressman Christopher Smith this week blasted "Castro's unbridled
cruelty, thirst for blood and extreme paranoia," and decried the recent
mass arrests, which he said targeted "Cuba's bravest and brightest."
Castro opponents, like Dennis Hays of the Cuban American National Foundation
(CANF), said legislators would now have to use greater scrutiny with a regime he
called a "nasty, brutal piece of work."
In the current climate "no serious legislation" expanding US-Cuba
trade ties can get through Congress, he said.
The UN Human Rights Commission adopted a resolution urging Havana to allow a
representative of the body to visit the Communist island.
However, a toughly-worded amendment, which would have explicitly condemned
Cuba's recent crackdown, was rejected -- as was an amendment proposed by Cuba
calling to end the US embargo.
Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, one of the most ardent
opponents of the Castro regime, said she welcomed the UN rights commission vote
as "a very positive development."
She also hailed recent unanimous resolutions in the US House and Senate
condemning the Cuban government.
"We've been pleasantly surprised by the reaction of our colleagues in
Congress" which she said "will make it difficult for these folks to
spin their way out of helping this regime," she said.
Cuba wards off explicit criticism of clampdown at UN rights forum
Thu Apr 17, 6:56 PM ET
GENEVA (AFP) - Cuba warded off explicit condemnation of its recent clampdown
on political dissidents at the UN's top human rights forum, but failed in its
call for an immediate lifting of the "illegal" US embargo against it.
However, the UN Human Rights Commission adopted a resolution presented by
three Latin American countries that urged Havana to allow a representative of
the body to visit the Communist island.
The vote had been put off for 24 hours after countries gave themselves more
time to consider a Costa Rican amendment that condemned the stiff jail terms
Cuba imposed on nearly 80 dissidents and the execution of three ferry hijackers
this month.
Despite international criticism of the clampdown, 31 of the 53 UN body
members rejected the proposed change. The United States, Canada and European
countries were among 15 countries that supported more explicit finger-pointing.
The text expressed "deep concern" about the "recent
detention, summary prosecution and harsh sentencing of numerous members of the
political opposition" and urged Cuba to release them immediately.
The US ambassador to the United Nations, Kevin Moley, said that although the
text that was finally adopted did not refer to the recent arrests and
executions, it "gives some hopes to the dissidents in Cuba".
"Let's hope that next year, this time Cuban people be free to hold free
and fair elections for themselves and have freedom," he told reporters.
Diplomats also rejected an amendment put forward by Cuba calling for the "immediate
ending of the unilateral and illegal embargo" imposed by the United States
against it for the past four decades.
Cuba's ambassador Ivan Mora Godoy slammed the rejection as a display of the "greatest
brazenness".
He said that failing to denounce the blockade reflected "the hypocrisy
and double standards (news - web sites) with which human rights are discussed in
this body".
Talks on Iraq, meanwhile, were put off until next week to give diplomats
more time to discuss a resolution that takes into account the downfall of Saddam
Hussein's regime in the US-led war.
After an historic first for the UN body on Wednesday in targeting North
Korea in a vote, Belarus also for the first time fell under the Commission's
spotlight on Thursday.
In the only resolution presented before the UN body by the United States,
the authoritarian regime of president Alexander Lukashenko was condemned for
subjecting opposition members to arbitrary detention, disappearances and
executions.
Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo were also criticised for
multiple human rights violations, although the resolutions in both cases also
welcomed efforts towards peace.
The UN Human Rights Commission itself came under fire Thursday by US-based
Human Rights Watch (HRW) over its own record.
The organisation accused the UN forum of having let Russia "off the
hook" over alleged rights abuses in the war-torn rebel republic of Chechnya
(news - web sites) and in Sudan after failed resolutions on Wednesday.
A critical resolution on Zimbabwe was also blocked on Wednesday by a
so-called "no action" motion, effectively halting any debate on the
issue. HRW said the move amounted to a "self-imposed gag order".
Its spokeswoman Joanna Weschler said the voting had shown that "many
Commission members are more concerned with protecting each other than protecting
the victims of human rights abuse".
However, along with North Korea, Turkmenistan and Myanmar were criticised in
resolutions Wednesday at the UN forum, due to wrap up its annual six-week
session here at the end of next week.
Playboy Settles Cuban Embargo Complaint
Fri Apr 18, 6:00 PM ET Add U.S. National - AP to My Yahoo!
WASHINGTON - Playboy Enterprises has paid the government $27,500 to settle
an allegation that it conducted business in Cuba in violation of a long-standing
U.S. embargo, according to documents released Friday.
The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which enforces
the embargo and other economic sanctions the United States imposes, recently
began disclosing penalties assessed or payments made as part of settlements
involving alleged violations of economic sanctions.
The documents provide few details. The Playboy case involved a "currency
travel-related transaction," the documents said.
Angela DePaul, a spokeswoman for Playboy, said the payment was made to
settle a dispute over whether "artistic and journalistic activities in Cuba"
violated the embargo. She said the case involved a pictorial that ran in the
magazine's August 2002 issue.
The documents also said that Voices in the Wilderness, a group that wants to
end economic sanctions against the people of Iraq, was assessed a $20,000 fine
for violating an embargo against Iraq.
Daniel Muller, a spokesman for the group, said the group refused to pay the
fine. "The truth is we did not pay it. We refused to pay in on principle,"
Muller said.
A Treasury spokesman confirmed the fine wasn't paid. The violation involved
exporting an undisclosed good or service, according to the documents. Muller
said the case involved bringing medicine to children several years ago.
OFAC's documents don't specify when the problem transactions occurred. | 
