By Eric Pianin. Washington Post Staff Writer. Friday, May 12, 2000; Page A28
A drive to ease the economic sanctions against Cuba and other rogue countries gathered momentum on both sides of the Capitol this week in the latest sign of congressional skepticism that hard-line policies are having any beneficial effect.
The push is being fueled by farm-state Republicans and commodity dealers frustrated with the loss of an estimated $7 billion of annual overseas sales, and by churches and humanitarian groups that argue that the 40-year-old sanctions against Cuba have done nothing to undermine the Castro regime
but have hurt millions of innocent people.
Proponents in both the House and the Senate succeeded this week in attaching amendments to agriculture spending bills lifting the sanctions on the sale of food and drugs to Cuba as well as to Iran, Sudan, Libya and North Korea.
And in the most striking sign of the coalition's growing strength, the House Appropriations Committee voted 35 to 24 Wednesday evening to spurn an effort by Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) to strike the amendment from the spending bill. Fifteen Republicans, including chief sponsor George R.
Nethercutt (Wash.), opposed DeLay's effort.
Last year, the Senate approved a similar provision lifting the sanctions but House GOP leaders intervened to prevent their own negotiators from accepting the measure. While DeLay and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) began mapping a strategy to try to block the measure in the Rules
Committee, Nethercutt and Senate advocates predicted that they will have enough support to prevail this year.
"I think we have the votes to sustain our position," Nethercutt said yesterday. "There is a consensus that this not a good foreign policy measure. It doesn't change minds or hearts . . . it puts [our farmers] at a competitive disadvantage, and it's counter to our humanitarian
nature."
Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), a chief sponsor in the Senate, agreed that a combination of factors--including the gradual softening of U.S. sanctions against other so-called terrorist nations--have increased the odds that the sanctions against Cuba will be lifted this year. Earlier this year,
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), long a hard-liner against Cuba, permitted his committee to approve a bill authorizing the sale of drugs and food to Cuba under certain conditions, although he personally opposed the move.
Rep. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), a Cuban American and critic of the Castro government, assailed GOP leaders yesterday for "holding themselves out as strong defenders of the values of the Cuban community" and yet allowing their own members to pass legislation to end the U.S. leverage with
Cuba.
"They seem to be able to control everything else if they want to," he said.
An administration official said that while the White House is not averse to the idea of modifying the sanctions on some countries, it opposes the legislation on grounds that it interferes with the president's ability to make foreign policy. "Sanctions decisions--either to impose, lift or
modify--should reflect a cooperative relationship between the Congress and the president," the official said. "Sanctions legislation should give the president the flexibility he needs to conduct foreign policy and protect national security."
The long-simmering controversy over the wisdom of the sanctions, first imposed at the height of the Cold War during the Kennedy administration, has received renewed attention during the custody battle over Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy who was plucked from the ocean last Thanksgiving and became
a cause celebre of Miami's anti-Castro Cuban American community.
Even as DeLay and other GOP leaders seized on the Gonzalez custody fight to stoke anti-Castro sentiment, many rank-and-file Republicans have been quietly working for months to try to lift the economic pressure on the communist regime. "I cannot look my farmers in the eye and say I haven't
done everything possible to help you," said Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.), who lobbied her colleagues to overturn the embargo. "We're facing now the third year of terrible commodity prices."
Yesterday, DeLay conceded that he had been "a little" surprised by the outcome of the vote in the House Appropriations Committee but declined to say what he would do next.
One obvious step would be to use the Rules Committee to strip the measure of any protection so that it can be challenged on the floor when the House takes up the fiscal 2001 spending bill, as early as next week.
Staff writers Juliet Eilperin and John Lancaster contributed to this report.
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