Yahoo! July 25, 2000
Jerry Brown Decries Cuba Sanctions
By Anita Snow, Associated Press Writer.
HAVANA, 24 (AP) - Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown called Monday for an end to U.S. trade sanctions against Cuba during a visit aimed at increasing relations between his California city and the eastern Cuban city of Santiago.
"The battle over trade with China has ended,'' the former California governor said, referring to the recent congressional vote to grant permanent, normal trade status to the Asian communist nation. "There is not a fig leaf to cover the lack of logic of the Cuba trade embargo.''
During a morning visit with Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon, Brown noted that the Oakland City Council passed a resolution two years ago asking President Clinton to do away with the trade sanctions imposed against Cuba in 1962.
He called recent moves in Congress to ease the sanctions by lifting restrictions on food and medicine sales to the island "a step in the right direction'' but added that lawmakers "are moving slowly.''
Brown leaves Tuesday for a two-day visit to the eastern city of Santiago, which is in the process of forming a sister city relationship with Oakland. He said he envisions increased exchanges between Santiago and Oakland, allowing Cuban teachers, musicians, artists and other professionals to
visit Oakland and vice versa.
"There are many things we could do of mutual benefit,'' Brown said during his meeting with Alarcon, Fidel Castro's top man on Cuba-U.S. affairs.
The mayor described Oakland as a "very diverse city, a place of innovation and creativity'' whose people would embrace such international exchanges.
"I see this visit as a way of increasing Oakland's profile as a place where things happen,'' he said.
Brown arrived on his first trip to Cuba early Sunday. He toured renovation projects in Old Havana.
Brown was California governor from 1975-1983. He ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, 1980 and 1992, then won a landslide victory in the race to become mayor of Oakland in 1998.
No meeting with Castro was immediately scheduled, but the Cuban president often talks with American politicians during their visits to the island.
Cuba Recognizes Congress' Attempts
By Anita Snow, Associated Press Writer.
HAVANA, 25 (AP) - Fidel Castro on Monday night urged the entire population of Havana to turn out for a massive march to protest the U.S. trade embargo and celebrate the start of the revolution that triumphed 41 years ago.
"This is more important than that 26 of July when we started the armed struggle,'' Castro said on a live television program. "It is a strategic fight'' this time.
"More than 1 million of us will participate in this march,'' the Cuban president predicted. "Every revolutionary, every patriot who can.''
Havana has about 2 million residents.
The march on Wednesday, coming amid growing moves in Congress to chip away at nearly four-decade-old trade sanctions against Cuba, appeared aimed at influencing American public opinion on the issue.
Cuba has been under agricultural and other trade sanctions since July 1963, longer than any other country except North Korea.
Castro has credited the huge rallies and marches conducted almost daily during the fight to bring 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez back to Cuba last month after his father's custody battle with U.S. relatives.
In its first public reaction to last week's moves in Congress to ease sanctions against Cuba, the country's leadership Monday recognized the "noble and constructive'' moves, but said only a full lifting of the embargo would help the nation.
"We have a duty to appreciate their noble and constructive efforts,'' said an editorial that ran on the front page of three official Cuban newspapers.
But the editorial in the Communist Party daily Granma, the Communist youth daily Juventud Rebelde and the weekly journal of Communist workers Trabajadores went on to say that Cuba "would not have the resources to buy food and medicine under the conditions'' outlined in the proposed
legislation.
Critics of the language in one of the House measures say that financing restrictions would effectively render impossible most sales to Cuba.
The House voted 301-116 Thursday to stop enforcing provisions that ban U.S. food exports and limit sales of American medicine to Cuba and four other nations - Iran, Libya, North Korea and Sudan.
The Senate passed a bill the same day to permit food and medical sales to the five countries. |