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By GEORGE GEDDA
.c The Associated Press, March 10
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Defenders of the four-decade-old U.S. embargo against
Cuba said Wednesday it has helped decimate the once-powerful Cuban military and
forced economic reforms that otherwise would not been undertaken.
Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., said at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee
hearing that the weakening of the Cuban military one of several ``real, lasting
and tangible benefits'' of the economic embargo in recent years.
But Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, a Cuban exile who heads a Miami-based
anti-embargo group, testified that 40 years of isolation of the Cuban regime has
brought misery to the Cuban people and served only to please ``discredited''
Florida exile groups opposed to President Fidel Castro.
With committee Chairman Jesse Helms, R-N.C., seated a few feet away, Menoyo
said Helms' embargo-tightening legislation of 1996 is ``an insult to Cubans,
offends the world'' and serves to perpetuate the Castro government.
``Constructive rapprochement,'' he said, ``was yesterday, is today and will
be tomorrow the best way out of conflicts.''
Helms rejected that argument, declaring that the Canadian government's
policy of reaching out to Cuba ``has served to prop up the Castro regime but has
done nothing to advance human rights or democracy.''
Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., deplored a recent crackdown on dissidents in
Cuba but said the U.S. response should not be to try to isolate the regime
further.
Menoyo was one of four Cuban exiles who testified -- and the only one who
advocated an attempt by the United States to establish normal relations with
Cuba.
Luis Zuniga, president of the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba, said the
embargo had minimal effect on Cuba before 1991 because the Caribbean island was
able to count on generous subsidies from the Soviet Union.
Since then, he said, Cuba has cut its military budget by 48 percent and
eliminated its navy altogether. He also said the steep economic decline in Cuba
after the collapse of the Soviet Union forced the government to legalize the
dollar, one of several economic liberalizations it has approved.
During the 1980s, as a result of Soviet assistance, Cuba boasted perhaps the
most formidable military establishment in Latin America. It maintained tens of
thousands of troops in Angola in support of the leftist government there and
provided military backing to leftist forces in Central America. When the
economic crisis struck early in the decade, Castro renounced Cuban involvement
in overseas conflicts. These days, many armed services personnel do farm labor.
At the hearing, Frank Calzon, executive director of the Center for a Free
Cuba, called on the Clinton administration to reaffirm its determination to stay
the course on its Cuba policy until there is substantive political reform on the
island.
The absence of reform, he said, is illustrated by what he called the
``discouraging'' aftermath of the January 1998 visit to Cuba of Pope John Paul
II.
He cited the recent sedition trial of four dissidents: Marta Beatriz Roque,
an economist; Rene Gomez Manzano, an attorney; Vladimiro Roca, an economist and
son of a prominent leader of Cuba's Communist Party; and Feliz Bonne, a teacher
and engineer.
They were charged with promoting aggressive U.S. policies toward the
communist nation and trying to harm the economy by discouraging foreign
investment. Verdicts in the trial are pending.
The four were arrested in July 1997 after publication of a pamphlet titled
``The Fatherland Belongs to All.'' A large picture of the four was on display in
the hearing room.
AP-NY-03-10-99 1701EST
Copyright 1999 The Associated Press |