Yahoo! June 21, 2000
Senate Rejects Commission Review of Cuba Policy
By Charles Abbott
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate refused on Tuesday to create a commission to review U.S. policy on Cuba, with some senators complaining it was a backdoor effort to end the long-standing embargo on Cuba and a cosseting of Fidel Castro.
While sponsor Chris Dodd vowed an even-handed look at Cuba policy, opponents said Castro, leader of the 1959 Communist revolution in Cuba, had to move toward democracy before any U.S. change should be considered. Senators rejected the commission, 59-41.
It left a provision for unfettered food and medicine sales to Cuba, attached to agriculture funding bills in both chambers of Congress, as the major vehicle for altering trade sanctions imposed four decades ago in hopes of ousting the Cuban president.
Farm-state lawmakers were hopeful of advancing the proposal in the House of Representatives this week but made no progress on Tuesday. Republican leaders want to scrub the idea, which was raised unsuccessfully in 1998 and 1999.
Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat, faced myriad objections to his proposal for a bipartisan, 12-member review commission. They ranged from charges of cosseting Castro to warnings the commission would handcuff the next president, whether Democrat Al Gore (news - web sites) or Republican George W. Bush
(news - web sites).
Virginia Republican John Warner, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, withdrew support for the commission because it might impede passage of a bill from his committee.
``Making unilateral concessions to a dictatorship on its last legs is the worst sort of appeasement,'' said North Carolina Republican Jesse Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
``Cuba should first change its policy toward its own people,'' said New Hampshire Republican Bob Smith. Smith and others said the commission was a ruse for ending the embargo.
A spokeswoman for Dodd said there was no immediate decision whether to try again this year for the commission, which would have examined U.S. policy during the transition at the White House. She said momentum was growing for a special review and for allowing unlimited food and medicine sales to
Havana.
U.S. farm and business groups say Cuba, 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Florida, would be a natural market for U.S. exports. Cuba imports about $700 million worth of food annually.
``Cuba has no money...the nation is bankrupt,'' scoffed New Jersey Democrat Robert Torricelli. ``No Cuban is suffering due to the United States government. They are suffering due to Fidel Castro.''
Food and medicine sales are permitted now under restrictions. U.S food, for example, can be sold only to nongovernmental groups.
Under the proposals pending in Congress, food and medicine would be exempt from unilateral U.S. sanctions, a change that would affect Cuba, Libya, North Korea, Iran and Sudan.
North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan said President Clinton's decision to ease sanctions on North Korea, coupled with a drive to normalize trade relations with China, should improve the chances of food and medicine sales to Cuba.
``That's a horrible contradiction -- to do all that and leave sanctions in place on Cuba,'' said Dorgan.
Senate Rejects Cuba Ties Commission
By Tom Raum, Associated Press Writer.
WASHINGTON, 20 (AP) - The Senate rejected a proposal Tuesday to set up a commission to explore forging closer ties with Cuba, even though the chamber had previously voted to ease restrictions on food and medicine shipments.
Along largely party lines, the Republican-controlled chamber rejected the proposal by Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.,on a 59-41 vote.
Dodd argued that time was long past for the United States to stop considering the regime of Fidel Castro a military threat and to make plans for a ``soft landing'' in terms of restoring ties with the island.
But his appeal met with strong emotions.
``There is no freedom in Cuba, there is no progress,'' asserted Sen. John McCain (news - web sites), R-Ariz.
And Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, asked colleagues: ``What on earth has Fidel Castro done to deserve the forbearance of the United States?''
``He's a bloodthirsty tyrant,'' Helms added.
Dodd's proposal would have set up a 12 member commission, with six members to be appointed by the president and the other six split among selections by congressional majority and minority leaders.
It would make recommendations next spring, to the next president.
But Sen. Connie Mack, R-Fla., an opponent, said such a makeup would mean that ``eight of the 12 members would be appointed by Democrats. This is not the way to set foreign policy.''
Supporters had hoped that public attention given to the plight of Elian Gonzalez, the youthful Cuban shipwreck victim, would build support for easing ties with Castro's government.
Dodd's proposal was an amendment to a massive defense bill. The commission would have determined whether Cuba should still be viewed a military threat, plus make recommendations on improving relations if the answer was in the negative.
The Senate has voted several times to ease the embargo with Cuba to permit shipments of food and medicine, but so far such an approach has been blocked in the House.
The House Republican leadership has been opposed to easing the embargo on Cuba but is negotiating with lawmakers who inserted a provision in an agricultural appropriations bill to allow Cubans to buy U.S. food and medicine.
The spending bill has been stalled since House leaders backed down last month from forcing a vote to strip the legislation of the Cuba measure.
House Republican Whip Tom DeLay, who has been a staunch supporter of the embargo, is now trying to broker an agreement between anti-embargo House members and Florida lawmakers who oppose sales to Cuba, said spokesman Jonathan Baron.
While DeLay ``remains opposed to easing sanctions on rogue states, including Cuba, whenever there are disagreements in the Republican conference the leadership works to resolve them,'' said Baron said.
The legislation would bar the U.S. government from subsidizing any sales to Cuba. A similar provision has been approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee.
``Our margin continues to grow rather than decline has time goes on,'' said Rob Neel, an aide to Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., a leading opponent of the embargo. ``A lot of moderate members don't feel we've been given a fair shake on this.''
Elian a Step Closer To Cuba Return
By Nicole Winfield, Associated Press Writer.
CARDENAS, Cuba 21 (AP) - With the latest court filing in the Elian Gonzalez saga, people in Cardenas hope the 6-year-old is one step closer to returning to his hometown.
Despite months of legal wrangling and delays, this pastel-tinted town hasn't lost faith that the American judicial system - scrutinized daily on national television - will eventually send Elian back to his family and friends.
``We can wait. We hope it's not so long, but we can wait,'' Manuel Diaz-Garcia said Tuesday as he picked up his 7-year-old granddaughter from Elian's school in rural Cardenas, about 90 miles east of Havana.
Earlier in the day, lawyers for Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, and the U.S. Justice Department initiated the latest legal step in the international custody battle over the boy, urging a federal court to reject an appeal by Elian's Miami relatives and immediately dissolve an injunction
keeping Gonzalez and his son in the United States.
In a four-page filing, lawyers for Gonzalez said a three-judge appeals panel's ruling this month that only Gonzalez could speak for Elian was ``indisputably a reasonable choice.''
The government agreed in a separate filing Tuesday with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, saying Elian's great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, was ``wide of the mark'' in asking the full appeals court to hear the Miami relatives' appeal.
Seven of the 12 judges would have to agree to hear the case for it to come before the full court. No timetable was given Tuesday for the court's decision. If the full appeals court rejects the rehearing, the Miami relatives would have seven days to take their case to the Supreme Court.
``The more time that goes by, the more we want him to come back,'' said Miriam Torres, a guide at the Oscar Maria de Rojas Museum in Cardenas, which has set up an exhibit documenting the campaign to bring Elian home.
``Even if it takes five years, the desire will be the same,'' she said, standing in front of a mural depicting Elian's life in Cuba and the United States and walls covered with letters from all over Cuba urging Elian to return.
Elian was rescued off the Florida coast in late November after his mother and 10 others drowned when their boat sank en route to the United States. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service decided the boy should be returned to his father. But the Miami relatives who cared for Elian since
his rescue refused to relinquish the boy, and federal agents seized him April 22 and reunited him with his father near Washington.
Jennifer Rodriguez Abrantes, who is in Elian's first-grade class at the Marcelo Salado primary school, said she wanted Elian to come back because he left when the class was just learning how to write the number eight.
As she left the school for lunch with her father, perched on his bicycle, she said she wanted Elian to come back soon ``so we can help him so he isn't left back.''
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