By David Morris, Heidi Przybyla and Emily Schwartz. Bloomberg.com. Thu, 29 Jun 2000, 12:47pm EDT
Washington, June 28 (Bloomberg) -- President Bill Clinton said he will consider signing legislation allowing food sales to Cuba, but vowed the U.S. won't consider lifting broader sanctions until Fidel Castro shows a willingness to reach out to the administration and Congress.
Clinton, in a White House news conference, said Cuba and the U.S. were moving toward normal relations until 1996 when the Cuban air force shot down two private planes flown by a U.S. exile group, killing four Americans.
``The deliberate decision to murder those people changed everything,'' Clinton said. ``And it made me wonder whether Mr. Castro was hoping we never would normalize relations, so then he could use us as an excuse for the failures of his regime.''
The president's comments came a day after U.S. House negotiators agreed to allow food and medicine sales to Cuba for the first time in 40 years. He also spoke as the custody battle over 6-year-old Cuban castaway Elian Gonzalez ended. Following a Supreme Court decision clearing the way, the boy's
father took him home.
The Senate backs a different form of the food sales bill. Clinton said he would review the final version of the measure that comes to him from Congress and will support it if it doesn't tie his hands on future action regarding Cuba sanctions.
Bipartisan Majority Needed
Calls for easing sanctions to allow food and medical shipments gained momentum after the House passed legislation last month to give China permanent access to the U.S. market.
Clinton, a proponent of opening doors to trade with China, said getting to the same point with Cuba requires much work because shooting down the planes resulted in Congress writing the Cuba sanctions into law.
``I don't believe that we can change the law until there is a bipartisan majority which believes that there has been some effort on the part of the Cuban government to reach out to us as well,'' the president said.
Under the House accord, Cuba would have to obtain loans from foreign banks to purchase U.S. goods, or pay for the imports in cash. The country would be barred from U.S. government credits to finance the purchases and couldn't get loans from U.S. banks. The House agreement also writes into law
restrictions on U.S. travel that currently can be lifted at the president's discretion.
The measure also ends food and medical sanctions against Libya, Sudan, North Korea and Iran.
Third Rail
Any effort to remove sanctions against Cuba is fraught with political danger, one representative said.
``Cuba is a third rail political issue within the Republican Party,'' said Mark Sanford, a South Carolina Republican who has sponsored legislation to lift the U.S. ban on travel to the country. ``It's an issue we are totally inconsistent on philosophically, given what we argued on China.''
Sanford and many other congressional proponents of improving trade relations with Cuba are either critical of the agreement or not fully behind it.
``It's three steps forward and two steps back,'' said Representative Charles Rangel of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee. ``It breaks this mindset that we can't do business with them and it creates some other problems.''
Because of the limitations included in the accord, Clinton should ``exercise his presidential powers not to allow the Congress to disrupt the embargo with one hand and then snatch presidential executive powers with the other hand,'' Rangel said. ``It would not bother me if the president vetoed
this and sent it back and said `do it right.'''
Cuban Minister
Allowing U.S. food and medical sales to Cuba while leaving the rest of the trade embargo intact would limit its impact, a Cuban official said.
``Our health care is financed by the economy, from what we earn from tourism, from agriculture,'' Cuban Health Minister Carlos Dotre said in Washington. ``As long the embargo continues on those economic spheres, we'll have economic problems'' paying for medical goods.
``There's a group of limitations and obstacles that practically would make the agreement something more of an utterance than a fact,'' Dotre said. He added that he and others in the Cuban government haven't determined a position on the measure because they haven't seen it yet.
President John F. Kennedy imposed the embargo in 1962, three years after Castro took power. Relaxing the ban could increase U.S. food and medical exports to Cuba to $444 million annually within five years, from $4 million in 1998, according to a study by former U.S. trade official Paula Stern.
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