The Seattle
Times Editorial. Monday, June 11, 2001 - 12:00 a.m. Pacific
In July, President Bush is required to decide whether to waive provisions
under the Helms-Burton Act that target foreign companies that invest in Cuba.
Bush should waive those provisions, as President Clinton did. He should go
further, and ask that the law be repealed.
The law has, of course, angered Fidel Castro, and that is all right, but it
has also interfered with the legitimate rights of the Canadians and Europeans.
It targets their companies by allowing any American, or a Cuban who has become
an American, to sue foreign companies who have invested in their properties that
have been confiscated by Cuba. It also bars executives from those companies, and
their spouses and children, from traveling to the United States.
The provision that allows private lawsuits has never been enforced. The law,
passed in 1996, allows the president to waive that provision for a six-month
period.
President Clinton regularly did that. He did not want a fight with his
allies over Helms-Burton, because the law was an extraterritorial assertion of
U.S. sovereignty over their businesses, and they were never going to agree to
it.
Indeed, the embargo itself, which predates Helms-Burton by 35 years, is
illegal under WTO accords that date back to 1947. Under those rules, which were
signed by Cuba and the United States, a WTO member can embargo another WTO
member (and Cuba is a member) only if it is vital to national security.
However, the WTO allows each country to decide what its national security
is, and we have decided since President Kennedy that an embargo of Cuba is vital
to ours.
Obviously, that is no longer true. Trade with Cuba is no more dangerous to
the United States than trade with Honduras. The embargo of Cuba should be
lifted.
As a step toward that, the Helms-Burton Act waiver should be extended for
another six months, and President Bush should recommend that the law be
repealed.
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