By Rafael Lorente. Washington Bureau. June 30, 2000. Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON -- Opposition by Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, a longtime opponent of the U.S. embargo of Cuba, could jeopardize a bill that would allow sales of food and medicine to the island.
The deal, agreed to Tuesday, ostensibly would allow food and medicine sales to Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea and Sudan. It would allow the sales to Cuba so long as they were not financed by American banks or secured with U.S. government-backed credits. And the agreement would ban imports from
Cuba and Iran.
But Dodd, a Democrat, opposes the legislation, even threatening to filibuster it, because he says "it is a clear-cut case of one hand giving while the other takes away."
Dodd and others critical to the coalition of liberal Democrats and farm-state Republicans necessary to pass anti-embargo measures are upset by provisions inserted into the legislation by South Florida's Cuban-American members of Congress and their allies.Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen, Florida Republicans who favor the embargo, worked out the deal with the main sponsor of the legislation, Rep. George Nethercutt (R-Wash.).
Even the White House expressed concern Thursday.
"There is certainly evidence now that provisions within the Nethercutt amendment move us backward as far as our people-to-people contacts," said White House spokesman Joe Lockhart. "And the more you look at the food and medicine part of that, the more difficult it is to examine or
to assess whether real food or medicine will get to Cuba."
The restrictive provisions in the embargo agreement, expected to be attached to the final version of the annual farm-spending bill, not only make it difficult to sell food and medicine to Cuba, but they also severely hamper the ability the White House now has to expand travel by Americans to the
island.
People-to-people contact, mainly through travel by humanitarian organizations and 11 other permitted groups, has been a cornerstone of President Clinton's policy toward Cuba.
Under the new measure, Clinton or a future president would need permission from Congress to add groups to the list or to expand the definition of the existing groups, experts said.
Under the agreement, U.S. companies would be prohibited from insuring products being sent to Cuba, forcing exporters to buy more expensive policies in a third country, said John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council.
Robert Muse, a Washington lawyer who specializes in Cuba, said the restrictions on travel and the roadblocks to potential sales to Cuba make the legislation a victory for embargo supporters such as Diaz-Balart. Talk of a breakthrough for embargo opponents is wrong, he said.
"We're going to exalt form over substance and declare victory and say this is a move toward lifting the Cuban embargo," Muse said. "It's nothing of the kind."
Diaz-Balart had been saying that all along. The morning the deal was struck, his office sent out a press release calling the travel restrictions the most important achievement in years.
Thursday, Diaz-Balart said he was willing to risk that a few food deals actually would go through in order to deny Fidel Castro's government access to American dollars from additional visitors.
"I'm more concerned with closing the hard currency, travel loophole than I am about a few sales," he said.
Nethercutt defended the agreement as good for farmers. His chief of staff, Jim Dornan, said, "This is a first step and it's an opening of the door. You've got to start somewhere."
But Muse said Diaz-Balart and his allies used the negotiations to cut off the next logical step the White House could take in any rapprochement with Cuba and Castro.
"They're always trying to take away from the executive branch the ability to modify the embargo and would like to entomb it in Congress," Muse said. |