Yahoo! May 5, 2000
Panel Votes To Lift Cuba Sanctions
By Philip Brasher, Ap Farm Writer.
WASHINGTON, 5 (AP) - Farm groups that want to sell food to Cuba have initiated a new battle in Congress over weakening the four-decades-old U.S. economic embargo on the island nation.
A House Appropriations Committee subcommittee approved legislation Thursday that would permit exports of food and medicine to Cuba so long as they are not subsidized by the federal government.
The measure, which was attached to an annual appropriations bill for the Agriculture Department, also would prohibit the president from including food and medicine in future embargoes of other countries without congressional approval. The measure was approved on a voice vote.
Senators who oppose the embargo said they hope to attach the Cuba measure to the Senate's version of the USDA spending bill. The Senate overwhelmingly approved a similar Cuba measure last year, but it was later killed after Cuban-American critics of Cuban President Fidel Castro prevailed on
House Republican leaders.
``This is critically important to our farmers. We ought to have this debate,'' said Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash.
A leading defender of the embargo, GOP Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Florida, circulated a letter to House colleagues Thursday asserting that Castro ``is oppressing the Cuban people more than ever.''
Diaz-Balart said in an interview that he is counting on the GOP leadership to maintain its support for the embargo. ``It's not over until the fat lady sings. She hasn't even begun to warm up,'' he said.
This year the legislation's chances could be complicated by the furor in Florida over Elian Gonzalez, the 6-year-old boy that the Clinton administration is seeking to return to his father in Cuba over the objections of his Florida relatives. Republicans have been critical of the administration's
handling of the case.
The administration last year lifted sanctions on exports of food and medicine to three other countries listed as terrorist states - Iran, Libya and Sudan - but was barred by federal law from including Cuba.
Supporters of the Cuban embargo say Cuba can't afford to buy U.S. food unless it's subsidized by the Agriculture Department, but farm groups insist that Cuba may save enough in shipping costs by buying American food to make up for the lack of federal aid.
Cuba currently buys about 700,000 metric tons of wheat a year, mostly from Europe and Canada.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said it was unfair to block sales of food to Cuba when Congress is considering permanent normal trade relations with China, which also has been criticized for its human rights record.
``You cannot be for one and not the other,'' she said.
House: Russia Still Spying in Cuba
By Tom Raum, Associated Press Writer.
WASHINGTON, 4 (AP) - Complaining that Moscow continues to spy on the United States from a Cold War listening post in Cuba, a House panel voted Thursday to restrict U.S. financial aid to Russia until it closes down the operation.
The installation at Lourdes, just south of Havana, has recently undergone a multibillion dollar upgrade, said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., author of the legislation.
Her bill to block new U.S. refinancing loans to Russia was approved by the House International Relations Committee by voice vote, despite Clinton administration objections.
However, the panel attached a Democratic-supported amendment to give the president the authority to waive the restrictions if he deems it in the national interest.
The move came even as another House panel, an appropriations subcommittee, took a step in the other direction, voting to lift sanctions on sales of food and medicine to Cuba.
Russia pays the Castro regime $100 million to $300 million a year for the rights to continue to use the facility, said committee Chairman Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y.
In the past, U.S. officials have acknowledged the existence of the listening post but have said it helps Russians verify U.S. compliance with arms-control agreements.
Russian defectors have said that Lourdes has been used to learn secret details about American battlefield plans.
Defense Secretary William Cohen, in a 1998 report to Congress, expressed concern about the continued operation of the listening post and ``the use of Cuba as a base for intelligence activities directed against the United States.''
Ros-Lehtinen said that since 1996, Russia has upgraded the post with ``satellite dishes, voice recognition facilities, more sophisticated computers for intercepting specific telephone numbers, faxes and computer data; and the means by which to engage in cyberwarfare against the United States.''
She suggested that the Lourdes center might have been used for cyberattacks on Pentagon computers last year.
Rep. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., said that Russia also appears to be constructing a new listening post at ``a second location.''
A senior U.S. intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the intelligence community has long known about the facility and is not aware of any recent threats associated with it.
Rep. Sam Gejdenson of Connecticut, senior Democrat on the panel, said that Congress should not be troubled by the facility.
``Let's focus on what's important,'' Gejdenson said. ``There are a lot of reasons why the United States might want to keep this facility open.''
House Panel Lifts Cuba Sanctions
By Philip Brasher, Ap Farm Writer.
WASHINGTON, 4 (AP) - A House panel voted Thursday to lift sanctions on sales of food and medicine to Cuba, rekindling a thorny political issue for Republicans in Florida.
Legislation added to an agricultural spending bill would license such sales so long as they are not subsidized by the U.S. government.
The measure also would prohibit the president from including food and medicine in future embargoes of other countries without congressional approval. The measure was approved on a voice vote by a subcommittee of the GOP-controlled House Appropriations Committee.
The Senate overwhelmingly approved a similar Cuba measure last year, but it was later killed after Cuban Americans prevailed on House Republican leaders.
``This is critically important to our farmers. We ought to have this debate,'' said Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash.
Farm groups and agribusinesses have been pushing to ease the Cuban embargo in hopes of moving a glut of wheat and other commodities.
Cuban Americans are an important voting bloc in Florida, which is considered a critical state for GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush (news - web sites) to win this fall.
A leading defender of the embargo, GOP Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Florida, circulated a letter to House colleagues Thursday asserting that President Fidel Castro ``is oppressing the Cuban people more than ever.''
Diaz-Balart said in an interview that he is counting on the GOP leadership to maintain its support for the embargo.
This year the legislation's chances could be complicated by the furor in Florida over Elian Gonzalez, the 6-year-old boy that the Clinton administration is seeking to return to his father in Cuba over the objections of his Florida relatives. Republicans have been harshly critical of the
administration's handling of the case.
The administration last year lifted sanctions on exports of food and medicine to three other countries listed as terrorist states - Iran, Libya and Sudan - but was barred by federal law from including Cuba.
Supporters of the Cuban embargo say Cuba can't afford to buy U.S. food unless it's subsidized by the Agriculture Department, but farm groups insist that Cuba may save enough in shipping costs by buying American food to make up for the lack of federal aid.
Cuba currently buys about 700,000 metric tons of wheat a year, mostly from Europe and Canada.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said it was unfair to block sales of food to Cuba when Congress is considering permanent normal trade relations with China, which also has been criticized for its human rights record.
``You cannot be for one and not the other,'' she said
Cuba official: Fla. kin kidnappers not been punished
By Anita Snow, Associated Press Writer.
HAVANA (AP) - Fidel Castro's point man in the Elian Gonzalez case expressed amazement on Thursday that the Miami relatives he refers to as the boy's ``kidnappers'' have not been punished for defying the federal U.S. government.
Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly, noted that the U.S. government had warned Elian's great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez that had violated the law when he failed to relinquish the boy over last month.
The government revoked Gonzalez's temporary custody of the boy and more than a week later launched a raid by armed agents on the family's Miami home to take the child.
``How is it possible that they have not been charged, that they have not been arrested?'' Alarcon said on the evening roundtable discussion of the Elian case broadcast on live television every week night.
Castro has attended most of the discussions and was present Thursday night. He did not speak.
Alarcon also complained that Justice Department officials never provided Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, with the names and backgrounds of the medical and mental health professionals who saw the boy when he was staying with his great uncle.
Instead of investigating the names and backgrounds themselves, Alarcon said, the officials said they would ask Lazaro Gonzalez for the information.
Now that the son and father have been reunited, the Justice Department has assigned a social worker and a child psychiatrist to visit Elian every other week to help monitor Elian Gonzalez while an appeals court weighs the boy's fate.
But Alarcon said that Juan Miguel Gonzalez was never asked what he wanted.
The father "appears to deserve less respect than the kidnapper,'' he said.
Nevertheless, Alarcon said that early statements made by Paulina F. Kernberg, the child psychiatrist who is to report on Elian to the government and to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, showed ``common sense.''
Kernberg has told the court that Elian displays a ``sense of well-being and happiness with his father'' and appears unlikely to suffer any lasting trauma from the raid by heavily armed Border Patrol agents.
Earlier Thursday, a group of California grandparents met with Elian's grandparents in Havana to express support for the fight to bring the 6-year-old back to his communist homeland.
``It doesn't make any sense - especially now that the boy is with his father'' that Elian has not yet been returned to Cuba, said Timothy Harding, a grandfather of seven from Santa Barbara, Calif.
``I knew that I just had to make some kind of contact with them and let them know how we felt,'' said Dorothy Fox, Harding's wife. ``Most grandmothers in the United States think that this little boy should be back in Cuba with his family.''
The couple was among about a dozen grandparents who met briefly with Elian's family here.
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