Yahoo! June 19, 2000
U.S. Seeks Terror Advice From Cuba
By Tom Raum, Associated Press Writer.
WASHINGTON, 19 (AP) - Senators wanted to know from the expert on international terrorism if any of the seven countries the United States accuses of exporting terror had improved its record. The answer: Cuba.
That may have surprised those in Congress who insist on preserving the 4-decades-old trade embargo against the communist country 90 miles from Florida.
But the response from Paul Bremer, chairman of the National Commission on Terrorism and the State Department's former top counterterrorism official, at a hearing was not news to a small but growing band of lawmakers seeking to normalize trade and other relations with Cuba.
A proposal senators plan to consider Tuesday would establish a commission that would, among other things, evaluate whether the United States should continue to view Cuba as a military threat.
For supporters of the amendment to a massive defense authorization bill, the answer comes easily: No.
``We've got to face the reality when it comes to Cuba,'' said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.
``If we can do it in Vietnam, if we can do it in Korea, if we can do it in China, places where we've had real hostility, we ought to be able to do it in a country like Cuba,'' Daschle said.
The amendment's sponsor, Sen. Christopher Dodd, and others hope to translate new American interest in Cuba generated by the Elian Gonzalez case into growing support in Congress for dismantling U.S. barriers against Cuba.
The push for closer ties with Cuba, however, runs right into the political reality of an election year in which Congress and the White House are up for grabs.
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., gives a ``big thumbs down'' to Dodd's proposed commission, Lott spokesman John Czwartacki said.
``Basically, he doesn't want to take any steps which would lead to increased trade with a despot in Cuba like Fidel Castro,'' Czwartacki said.
Dodd, D-Conn., recognizes the long odds.
``I'm stunned, in a way, that even this idea has provoked the kind of opposition it has,'' Dodd said.
The 12-member commission would examine the military threat issue and a range of other U.S.-Cuban topics and would make recommendations to the next president in the spring of 2001.
One of the strongest supporters will vote against it - but only because Sen. John Warner, R-Va., does not want the defense bill cluttered with more amendments.
Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has advocated such a commission for more than two years.
Does he believe Cuba is a military threat to the United States? ``I do not. I don't know that I ever did,'' he said in an interview.
``The one thing positive about the whole Elian Gonzalez affair is that the whole of America woke up to something - that our policy hasn't dislodged Castro,'' Warner said. ``Yet our whole relationship with the hemisphere here is affected by this war of words between the United States and Cuba.''
Public sentiment is slowly changing and softening toward Cuba, contends Craig Johnstone, head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's international division.
``I think the Senate, even before the Elian case, demonstrated it was ready to ease the embargo,'' Johnstone said.
He cited last year's overwhelming Senate passage of a measure to ease the embargo for food and medicine, which the House later rejected.
The House Appropriations Committee sought to revive the food-and-medicine waiver earlier this year. Anti-Castro forces have blocked a floor vote.
While Johnstone realizes the Dodd amendment may not pass, ``I think the purpose of it is to highlight the fact that we still have an embargo. As Al Gore (news - web sites) found out, the more attention there is to the Cuba issue, the more likely people will understand the embargo isn't
accomplishing what it was set up to do.''
With an eye on disproportionate political clout of Florida's Cuban-American community, Gore broke with President Clinton and sided with Elian's Florida relatives and said a family court should decide the boy's fate.
The most outspoken critics of the Castro regime dismiss Dodd's proposal.
``I know that this is a serious issue, but his proposal is so transparently biased that it's silly,'' said Sen. Connie Mack, R-Fla. ``It's so blatantly designed to determine a particular outcome in a presidential election year that it's silly.''
Dodd sees promoting close ties with Cuba as inevitable.
``All over the globe people are making an effort in this new millennium to reach out and find a new basis on which to have a relationship, and it's long overdue that we tried the same thing in this hemisphere, and specifically with regard to Cuba,'' Dodd said.
The defense bill is S. 2549
On the Net: Sen. Christopher Dodd: http://dodd.senate.gov
U.S. Wants 'People-To-People' Contact With Cuba
WASHINGTON, 18 (Reuters) - The U.S. government will push for more ``people-to-people'' contacts with Cuba to try to ``expand the space for the people'' on the communist-ruled island, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said on Sunday.
Citing greater air links and relaxed rules on wiring money to Cuba from the United States as examples, Albright said Washington would pursue more such links which have grown despite 41 years of hostility between the two countries' governments.
She expressed admiration for the Cuban people for living so many years under the Cuban government's ``systemic repression.''
``We have tried to expand the space for the people of Cuba,'' she said on CNN's ``Both Sides with Jesse Jackson.''
``I think we have to keep pursuing, through ways that we can, the people-to-people contacts and trying to expand the space for the people,'' she said.
The United States has kept a Cold War-era trade embargo on Cuba with the stated aim of pressing President Fidel Castro to reform his country's one-party political system. A politically powerful Cuban exile community has also kept on the pressure for a hard line U.S. policy.
But the two countries have increased exchanges of athletes, scholars, artists and musicians in recent years, including a game between the Baltimore Orioles and Cuba's national baseball team in Havana last year followed by a return game in Baltimore. Direct telephone links have been
reestablished.
Albright said the embargo remained ``the law of the land'' and rejected the idea that closer U.S. ties with China should mean the same thing for Cuba.
``We can't have the same policies for every country. Cuba is a very special case for the United States, it's 90 miles off our shore and it is of grave concern in terms of the systemic repression of their people,'' said Albright.
``I have the greatest admiration for the Cuban people who have lived under this system,'' said Albright. ``I think the people deserve to be able to express their views. They need to have an election in Cuba.''
Cuba Spat Makes Farm Bill a Political Football
By Charles Abbott
WASHINGTON, 18 (Reuters) - The annual U.S. farm spending bill, thanks to a sharp-edged debate over allowing food and medicine sales to Cuba, is becoming the foreign policy football of the year for Congress.
Middle East politics and rapprochement on the Korean Peninsula have been thrown into discussion as well of the $75 billion bill to fund the Agriculture Department and related agencies in fiscal 2001. Few bills invite that mixture.
All of it stems from language to exempt food and medicine from unilateral U.S. trade embargoes. Cuba would be the major beneficiary but Iran, Libya, Sudan and North Korea would be affected as well.
Farm and business groups have focused on Cuba and its 11 million citizens as a nearby, potentially lucrative market for U.S. goods. The Communist island, one of the last nations off-limits to U.S. exports, is 90 miles from Florida and imports about $700 million in food a year.
The United States imposed trade sanctions on Cuba in 1961 as President Fidel Castro, leader of the 1959 revolution, invited Soviet support. It would be a salient step, economically and politically, if unfettered food and medicine sales were allowed. Limited sales are possible now.
``I...feel as if we're about to make this major change,'' says Representative George Nethercutt, Washington state Republican, the leading advocate of food and medicine sales.
Republican leaders in the House (of Representatives) have spent several weeks working behind the scenes to scrap the language. The issue may come to a vote in the next few days. Farm groups were increasingly optimistic of prevailing.
``This is a big issue for agriculture, so it garners more attention -- and it should,'' said private consultant Bill Lesher. ``It seems some kind of sanctions (reform) time has come.''
While Cuba is an incendiary issue by itself, the scope of the sanctions language has brought other issues into the debate. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobbying group, has questioned the prospect of easing sanctions on Iran, where 13 Iranian Jews are accused of spying for
Israel.
U.S. economic sanctions on North Korea may soon be eased in the wake of an agreement with South Korea to ease tensions between the nations, separated since war broke out 50 years ago.
Nethercutt noted the thaw in relations between the nations --''that's significant'' -- while discussing opposition to his proposal. ``This is a very modest measure,'' he said.
Opposition includes Republican leaders and the Cuban-American lobby, which has unveiled a TV ad campaign to block any change in the embargo on Cuba. They view Castro as an unrepentant dictator who has done nothing to earn softer treatment.
``American trade should follow the flag, not the other way around...America stands for freedom,'' said Jose Cardenas of the Cuban American National Foundation in a rebuttal to the argument that economic engagement will foster democracy.
Advocates say the Cuban embargo is a Cold War relic that failed to oust Castro but hurts the ordinary Cuban and denies sales to U.S. firms. By one estimate, Cuba could be a $440 million a year market for U.S. food and medicine.
``We need to find another way to do this,'' said Thomas Donohue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which speaks for the business community. ``Let's take away his great excuse'' for shortages.
Donohue said sanctions reform was one of the chamber's top issues.
Agriculture spending bills in the House and Senate contain similar language to exempt food and medicine from unilateral U.S. embargoes unless Congress agrees. No U.S. export credits would be allowed for sales to formerly sanctioned countries. Annual export licenses would be needed for sales to
nations suspected of supporting terrorism.
Nonetheless, there was wide speculation that access to export credit guarantees would soon be an issue for Cuba. The nation is strapped for hard currency.
Elian Wishes Fidel Castro 'Happy Father's Day'
By Andrew Cawthorne
HAVANA, 17 (Reuters) - Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy still living in the United States seven months into a bitter political fight over his future, has sent a Father's Day greeting to Cuba's communist leader Fidel Castro.
Elian's signature headed a letter from him and his entourage of family and friends in Washington, wishing all Cuban fathers -- and especially Castro -- a happy day.
``On this Father's Day, we want to send an affectionate greeting, and a well-deserved kiss, to all of you, especially to one father whom we love dearly for his unrivaled teachings and his infinite love for us, our Commander-in-Chief,'' said the letter, published on Saturday a day ahead of
Father's Day, which is celebrated June 18 in the Americas.
The letter, in the ruling Communist Party's daily newspaper Granma, was also signed by Elian's own father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. He has been seeking the six-year-old's return since Elian was rescued at sea off Florida in November following a capsize that killed his mother and 10 other illegal
Cuban migrants.
Castro, 73, is famously secretive about his personal life, but is known to have several children. He fought for custody of his first child, ``Fidelito,'' or ``little Fidel,'' in the years before he came to power in a 1959 revolution .
Massive Rally
Also on Saturday, more than 250,000 Cubans gathered in the provincial city of Camaguey to demand Elian's return, and denounce the anti-communist Cuban American groups campaigning for him to stay with U.S. relatives in Miami.
The boy's fate has split Elian's family, pitted the Castro government against its bitterest enemies in Florida's Cuban American community, and prompted a national debate in the United States over Washington's policy toward the island.
In the latest evidence of that, two prominent U.S. senators announced Friday a bipartisan proposal to set up a national commission of experts to rethink U.S. policy on Cuba. That proposal came during moves in Congress to exclude food and medicine sales from economic sanctions on Cuba.
In Camaguey, the Cuban demonstrators gathered from soon after dawn for the latest event in a massive, patriotic campaign across the Caribbean island that has consisted of daily marches, rallies and TV debates dedicated to the Elian saga.
Called out by local authorities, and led by Castro's brother Raul Castro, who heads the armed forces and is second in Cuba's political hierarchy, the demonstrators waved flags and chanted ''Free Elian!..'' They also listened to a series of patriotic speeches extolling Cuba's political system and
condemning ''Yankee imperialism.''
``We will never tire in our fight. We will not stop until Elian comes back! But our battle continues beyond that, to save our revolution, to save socialism,'' one young speaker said in this capital of an agricultural zone in central Cuba.
Letter Predicts Homecoming Joy
The Father's Day letter from Elian and his entourage -- which Castro critics are likely to see as staged for political benefit -- lamented that they could not be back home to celebrate the day together with other fathers in Cuba.
``We wanted so much to be with you on this day ... But, as you know, the enemies of the fatherland are making every effort to delay Elian's return,'' the letter said.
``We are sure that other, happier Father's Days will come, because by then Elian will be in our land, and the millions of Juan Miguels in our country will feel the immense joy of having saved for ever one of their children.''
Elian was reunited with his father April 22 after a pre-dawn raid by armed U.S. immigration agents on the house of his U.S. relatives in Miami. Those relatives had refused to give up Elian, since taking him in after the November shipwreck, arguing that he should not be sent back to live under
communism.
Despite several U.S. court rulings in favor of Elian's father, the boy is still prohibited from leaving the country, and his father is awaiting the outcome of final appeal attempts by the Miami family.
Cuba To Diversify Sugar Exports
By Anita Snow, Associated Press Writer.
HAVANA, 16 (AP) - Wrapping up an International Sugar Organization conference on Friday, Cuba said it would step up production of sugar derivatives such as alcohol and animal feed.
Sugar Vice Minister Nelson Labrada, speaking on the last day of the conference, said Cuba needs ``a diversification, a sufficient capacity for flexibility'' to weather the ups and downs of world sugar prices.
Currently, Labrada said, about 15 percent of Cuba's sugar income comes from about 30 different types of derivatives, including rum and animal feed. Over the long term, Cuba aims to increase that to 40 or 50 percent.
To cut costs in sugar production, Cuba also hopes to increasingly replace petroleum with electrical energy and other types of renewable, cheaper energy, the vice minister said.
Although no longer Cuba's No. 1 source of hard currency, sugar remains a key part of the communist island's economy - accounting for about half of all export income.
Efficiency and diversification were explored during the four-day conference that wrapped up Friday at Havana's convention center.
With half the island's export income still coming from sugar, Cuba has been hard hit by low prices on the world market.
About 100 delegates from countries including Brazil, Canada, Colombia, France, India and Great Britain attended the 6th International Congress on Sugar and Sugar Cane Byproducts, conference organizers said.
The Cuban government also held a trade fair to show off the latest equipment and techniques for sugar production as well as new possibilities for the use of sugar and its byproducts.
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