Yahoo! February 8, 2001
Leader Wants Bush To Pursue Policy
By George Gedda, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON, 7 (AP) - The chairman of the leading Cuban exile organization
urged the Bush administration Wednesday to pursue policies that will "begin
to break the shackles of dependence'' forced on the Cuban people by the
country's communist government.
Jorge Mas Santos, chairman of the Cuban-American National Foundation, said
the program should be modeled after the initiatives the Reagan administration
took in Poland in the 1980s. They are widely credited with helping bring about a
transition to democracy in that country.
Mas Santos' comments were prepared for delivery in a speech to the
Inter-American Dialogue, a private research group that examines hemispheric
issues.
His proposals, if adopted, would expand people-to-people contacts that the
Clinton administration pursued as a means of planting democratic seeds in Cuba.
He said the United States should:
-Help support peaceful, pro-democracy activities by local Cuban independent
entities, non-government organizations and individuals. NGO's should also
receive training, organizational help and assistance to enable them to establish
links with foreign counterparts.
-Assist families of prisoners of conscience, especially those denied access
to jobs by Cuban authorities or who have lost the wages of an imprisoned spouse
or parent. "This is not only for humanitarian reasons but also to counter
the regime's continued, systematic campaign to decimate Cuba's peaceful
opposition,'' he said.
-Promote free and independent enterprise in Cuba by strengthening and
expanding the "heavily repressed and struggling'' private economic sector:
the self employed, home-based restaurants and hostels, independent farmers,
church-run clinics, private day care centers and other entities.
-Consider allowing U.S. businesses to export raw materials and other goods
to privately owned entities in Cuba provided there are assurances they are used
for their intended purpose.
-Establish business management training and labor rights institutes in Cuba
on the condition that all Cubans be allowed to take part regardless of political
affiliation.
Cuban President Fidel Castro (news - web sites) can be expected to resist
the proposals. Last month, Cuban authorities arrested two Czechs - one a member
of the Czech parliament - after they met with Cuban dissidents and provided them
with a portable computer, diskettes and CD-ROMs. Cuba said the Czechs were
sponsored by a New York-based pro-democracy group, Freedom House, and were
engaged in "interventionist and destabilizing activities'' on the island.
The Czechs were set free earlier this week after they admitted breaking
Cuban law. They had been detained for more than three weeks.
The Bush administration has not yet outlined its Cuba policy beyond saying
that it has no intention of softening the U.S. embargo against the island.
Mas Santos inaugurated an "Embassy for a Free Cuba'' Tuesday night in a
townhouse a few blocks north of the White House. Hundreds of well-wishers turned
up, including Sen. Robert Torricelli (news - bio - voting record), D-N.J., who
said, "We are never going away. We are never giving up. We will live to see
a free Cuba.''
Mas Santos has led the Miami-based CANF since 1997, the year his father and
CANF founder, Jorge Mas Canosa, died. Since its founding in the early 1980's,
CANF has been instrumental in persuading Congress and successive administrations
to maintain hard-line U.S. policies towards Cuba.
State Department Western Hemisphere desk:
http://www.state.gov/www/regions/wha/index.html
Ry Cooder's Cuba Trip Questioned In Clinton Controversy
By Rob Kemp. SonicNet. Wednesday February 07 11:45 PM EST
Ry Cooder has been known for more than 30 years as a consummate musician and
as a passionate advocate and diligent archivist of music from around the world.
But lately, some suggest that he can now be regarded as a member of a newly
conspicuous and controversial group: donors to the campaign of U.S. Sen. Hillary
Clinton (D-NY) who received favors from Bill Clinton in the waning hours of his
presidency.
Last Saturday, guitarist/producer Cooder returned to the United States from
Cuba, having recorded with local musicians in Havana. All obstacles to traveling
and recording in Cuba, which is under a strict, four-decade-old U.S. embargo,
were removed due to the intervention of outgoing Clinton administration
officials and the president himself.
Coincidentally or not, as he was encountering problems securing a license to
record in Cuba last year, Cooder contributed $10,000 to Hillary Clinton's
victorious campaign to represent the state of New York in the Senate.
Cooder's dispensation and contribution have come to light in the context of
Bill Clinton's exit from the White House, one that many maintain occurred under
a cloud of impropriety. But others think any such connection is rubbish.
"Whatever one thinks of [Bill] Clinton's decisions to pardon certain
people or to accept gifts, or relate favors granted for contributions received,"
said Rep. Howard Berman (D-California), "tying that to this decision to
give Ry Cooder a license to record great aging Cuban musicians is absolute
nonsense." Berman is the author of a 1988 amendment to the Constitution
allowing international cultural exchanges, even with countries under
anti-democratic governments such as that of Cuba's leader, Fidel Castro.
Candace Hanson, Cooder's lawyer, did not return a call for comment at press
time. Sen. Clinton's office has consistently denied any knowledge of Cooder's
traveling woes and any connection.
Unlike the trip he made to the country in 1996 — which yielded 1997's
massively popular, Grammy-winning Buena Vista Social Club album, and for which
he was fined $25,000 for recording there without a license — Cooder's most
recent jaunt to Cuba was authorized by the U.S. State Department and licensed by
the U.S. Treasury Department, according to the Baltimore Sun.
Initially, the State Department's Cuban Affairs section refused to approve
Cooder's application, filed in January 2000, to return to Cuba. In August 2000,
the Department specified that he could return but could not share in profits
resulting from the sessions, which were conducted with guitarist Manuel Galban.
Cooder did not accept, and re-applied in November, according to the Sun.
But in the same flurry of pardons and favors meted out to the likes of
fugitive financier Marc Rich and first brother Roger Clinton, outgoing Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright and National Security Adviser Samuel Barber
interceded on Cooder's behalf on January 17, three days before President Bush's
inauguration.
"It may very well be a coincidence," said Lawrence Nobles of the
Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington, D.C., organization focusing on
campaign finance reform. "Mr. Cooder has given campaign contributions to
other candidates (Democratic California Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne
Feinstein), but nothing this large. What's more important is the problem with
the whole system. You have something that appears suspicious: He was first fined
for going to Cuba, he puts in an application, then contributes to Senator
Clinton's campaign, and then his application is approved.
"It may very well be that it was approved for valid reasons, and nobody
in the line for authorizing the approval knew about the contribution,"
Nobles continued. "The problem here is that it looks like there may be
[favoritism involved]."
Berman disagrees. "As long as we have a system of private financing of
campaigns," he said, "one can always question the motivation for any
official action. Carrying that logic to this decision is off-base."
"I have been involved in this case for [15] months, speaking to the
State Department, the Treasury department and National Security Department,"
he said. "The reason this license wasn't granted sooner is about politics
in Florida." The powerful Cuban-American community in the Miami area is
viscerally anti-Castro, and is influential in perpetuating the embargo against
Cuba.
"I believe that major policymakers like Albright and Berger thought it
was crazy not to let him go down there and record musicians whom Castro kept
from performing in front of their own people and to people around the world for
years," he said.
If Berman offers any criticism regarding impropriety, he doesn't lay it at
Cooder's door, opting instead for an address in Chappaqua, New York. "When
you've done things that look suspicious, as occurred near the end of the
[Clinton] administration, you end up tainting a lot of decisions made for
straightforward, honest, noble purposes." Cooder plans to return to Havana
in March to record with Ibrahim Ferrer, a vocalist prominently featured on Buena
Vista Social Club.
AP Clarifies Cuba-Czech Story
HAVANA (AP) - In a story that moved on Feb. 6 under a Havana dateline, The
Associated Press reported that anti-Castro Cuban exiles were blamed for the 1976
car bomb slaying of former Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier in Washington,
D.C.
U.S. prosecutors said the Chilean secret police agency DINA recruited the
anti-communist Cuban exiles to eliminate Letelier, a socialist and leading
critic of Gen. Augusto Pinochet (news - web sites)'s military government.
Several Chilean officials were convicted in Chile and the United States in
connection with the case.
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