By Robert Cohen. Star-Ledger Washington Bureau. 06/19/00
WASHINGTON -- Thomas J. Donohue, the blunt-talking president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, spent six hours meeting with Fidel Castro in Havana last summer and came away more convinced than ever that it is time to do business with Cuba.
Donohue, the first chamber president to visit Cuba since the 1959 revolution, has sent an army of lobbyists to Capitol Hill to push for a House vote this week to soften the 38-year-old trade embargo against the island nation.
"I am not telling the American Congress and the American people to go and embrace Castro. He is not exactly my poster child for free and open government," said Donohue during an interview at the Chamber building located just a block from the White House. "But for 41 years we have
tried a stance of isolating Cuba and it has fundamentally failed to change their position," he said. "It is time to find another way to do this."
The Donohue approach calls for the unrestricted sale of food and medicine to Cuba as a first step toward normalizing trade relations. Such a move has long been pushed by left-leaning advocacy organizations and church groups that usually do not see eye to eye with the chamber, and it now has been
embraced by a wide array of business and farming interests.
Opponents of changing the policy, led by the Cuban-exile community in Florida and New Jersey and their allies in Congress, argue that loosening economic sanctions will only strengthen the Castro dictatorship. Removing the embargo, they said, will eliminate the only leverage the U.S. has to force
change and bring about democracy in Cuba.
"For Donohue and his unholy alliance, it's not about principles or democracy or human rights," said Rep. Robert Menendez (D-13th Dist.), a Cuban-American and ardent foe of Castro. "The only color they see is green. It's all about money."
An amendment currently part of a pending House agriculture appropriations bill would allow unrestricted food and medicine sales to Cuba as well as to Iran, Libya, Sudan and North Korea -- countries that all have human rights abuses or a history of sponsoring terrorism.
The House proposal, sponsored by Rep. George Nethercutt (R-Wash.), is part of a broader campaign by business and farm lobbies to end all unilateral U.S. sanctions and open potentially lucrative markets now closed to American companies.
The Senate overwhelming approved a similar amendment last year but House Republican leaders succeeded in killing the measure. Supporters believe they now have a majority in the House to change American policy. The Clinton administration has already moved on its own to lift North Korean
sanctions.
The Republican leadership, led by House Whip Tom DeLay of Texas, still opposes loosening the sanctions, and has made clear it will either use procedural maneuvers to defeat the effort this week or prevent a vote on the issue altogether.
The anti-Castro forces have been aided by the American Israeli Political Action Committee, which has been lobbying House members to vote against the amendment. AIPAC wants to keep the sanctions in place against Iran, which is now engaged in a major show trial against 13 Iranian Jews.
Donohue said he does not expect to succeed this year despite the growing support, but said it will only be a matter of time. "The trend line is in the right direction," said Donohue.
Engagement through trade and other contacts, he said, will do more to open the repressive Cuban society and limit human rights abuses than economic penalties that have proved futile.
The changing dynamic on Capitol Hill clearly has the advocates of the Cuban embargo worried.
"We will probably have another victory this time, but it is getting increasingly difficult," said Menendez.
Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.), the author of a 1992 law that strengthened the embargo, said it has been "a damaging year."
Torricelli said the Chamber and the American Farm Bureau have given "a false promise" that Cuba represents a great economic opportunity.
"Cuba has a $300 per capita income, it is the least desirable place to invest in the entire developing world and it is a Marxist country with massive debt," said Torricelli.
The senator said the aim of the legislation is really to open trade with Iran, Libya and Sudan because they have oil money to purchase agricultural goods, machinery and other products. "They are just using Cuba as a cover," said Torricelli.
Dan Fisk, a foreign policy expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation, agreed the business groups see Cuba as the "weak link in the current sanctions structure" they want to break.
"With the demise of the Cold War, the business community decided they should be unfettered in their ability to engage in commercial activity, and Donohue represents a continuation of that philosophy," said Fisk. "But they still favor using sanctions to help settle trade disputes."
Besides the business lobby, a number of other factors are at work in support of breaking the embargo.
Farmers have been suffering from low commodity prices and have now become vocal players in the anti-embargo fight, influencing a number of lawmakers from agricultural states who previously supported the trade restrictions without question.
Proponents also have been successfully arguing it makes little sense to normalize trade with China, a communist nation with a poor human rights record, while continuing to isolate Cuba. In addition, the high-profile custody battle over Cuban shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez has hurt the public
image of the Cuban-American community, and persuaded some lawmakers to oppose the embargo.
"The Cuban-American leadership shot itself in the foot over the Elian episode, and they won't exercise the same influence over policy in the future," said Wayne Smith, a former chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana and an advocate of ending the embargo.
The Cuban American National Foundation, a leading anti-Castro organization, last week moved to regain some of its lost ground. It launched television ads in several congressional districts including Nethercutt's, and vowed to wage a more aggressive educational campaign to prevent erosion of the
embargo.
"We cannot sit back while the business lobby tries to whitewash Castro's horrendous abuses of his own people and flagrant disregard for international law," said Jose Cardenas, the foundation's Washington director. |