Yahoo! September 29, 2000
Fuentes Wins Gold in Taekwondo
SYDNEY, Australia, 29 (AP) - Angel Valodia Matos Fuentes of Cuba beat
Faissal Ebnoutalib of Germany to win the Olympic gold medal Friday in the men's
under-80 kilogram division of taekwondo.
Victor Manuel Estrada Garibay of Mexico won the bronze.
Senators Seek Cuba Trade Compromise
By Philip Brasher, Ap Farm Writer
WASHINGTON, 29 (AP)- Lawmakers are trying to close a deal to allow food
sales to Cuba under terms that would satisfy farm and business groups without
upsetting anti-Castro interests in Florida, a key state in the presidential
election.
House leaders announced an agreement late Wednesday that would bar both the
federal government and U.S. banks from financing the sales and also would
prevent any easing of restrictions on travel to Cuba.
But some senators said Thursday they would work to ease the restrictive
terms when House and Senate negotiators take up an agricultural spending bill
next week.
``There will be a compromise between the House and the Senate,'' said Sen.
Thad Cochran, a Mississippi Republican who is chairman of the Senate
agricultural appropriations subcommittee.
Farm and business groups favor Senate-passed legislation that would permit
financing from private sources. But anti-Castro members of the House, led by
Cuban-American Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., and House Republican Whip Tom
DeLay of Texas, have refused to budge.
The Cuban-American community is an important voting bloc in Florida, a
toss-up state in the presidential race.
``Legislation that would be considered expansive would have already been
passed and signed into law had this not been an election year,'' said John
Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, a
business-funded group.
Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush (news - web sites) has said
he opposes lifting sanctions. Democratic nominee Vice President Al Gore (news -
web sites) has said he favors more contacts with Cubans ``without helping the
Castro government.''
Kavulich's group estimates that the House agreement would result in
relatively modest sales, about $28 million to $45 million, in the first year.
The deal is essentially the same as an agreement that Diaz-Balart reached
with some farm-state House members in June except that it clarifies that
financing from non-U.S. sources would be permitted.
Direct sales of medicine to Cuba have been allowed since 1992 under
restrictions similar to those that would be imposed on food shipments under the
House agreement: Cuba must pay cash for the goods or else obtain credit from a
third country.
Cuba buys about $2 million worth of U.S. medicine and health products
annually.
Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, said there was ``general consensus'' in the
Senate to support the House deal.
But Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said he would press for changes when a
House-Senate conference committee meets next week to work out the final version
of the agricultural spending bill.
``This really doesn't amount to very much,'' said Dorgan.
But supporters of the deal predicted that it would result in some
significant sales of wheat, rice and other commodities because Cuba will save so
much on shipping costs by buying U.S. products.
``They want our product,'' said Barbara Spangler, who directs trade policy
for the U.S. wheat industry.
Cuban Mom Losing Hope for Funeral
By Anita Snow, Associated Press Writer
HAVANA, 28 (AP) - Aleida Martinez Paredes said Thursday that it was painful
enough to lose her eldest son, killed last week when a stolen crop-duster full
of Cubans crashed in the ocean as they fled the island.
Now she cannot even bury him.
The U.S. government this week refused to grant the divorced, unemployed
woman a visa to visit Miami for the funeral of her 23-year-old son, because
officials feared she would not want to return home.
Martinez insisted she doesn't want to live in the United States, she only
wants to say goodbye to her son, Yudel Puig.
``It is absurd to say that I am going to stay there,'' said Martinez, 40, as
she smoked unfiltered black tobacco cigarettes and wiped her tears with a
handkerchief. ``I have another child here, a 10-year-old boy. I have Yudel's
son, my only grandchild.
``I don't know very much about politics,'' she said. ``But in a case like
this, politics should be set aside. They should not mix politics with human
sentiment and a mother's suffering.''
Despite the State Department's decision, Martinez said she would not give up
hope, at least until Friday, because U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen continues to
argue her case in Florida.
Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban-American lawmaker from Miami, said she is asking the
State Department to grant Paredes a humanitarian parole visa, instead of the
standard tourist visa she sought.
Yudel Puig's father, Isidro Puig of Miami, said funeral arrangements remain
on hold.
Puig, who could not swim, drowned after the plane crashed in the Gulf of
Mexico on Sept. 19. Nine others survived and were rescued by a passing
Panamanian freighter. They received medical treatment in Florida and were
granted parole.
Among them was Puig's older half-brother, Jovel Puig.
The pilot, Angel Lenin Iglesias, was Martinez's brother-in-law. He was
accompanied by his wife, Mercedes, who is Martinez's sister, and their two small
sons.
Sitting in a rattan rocker, in her crowded Old Havana apartment, Martinez
recalled how she screamed when civil aviation officials told her that her
sister, her brother-in-law and her little nephews had abandoned the country
aboard the old single-engine Russian craft that Iglesias flew to fumigate and
fertilize crops.
She said she cried again later in the day when she learned that Yudel had
also gone, but assumed he was safe and would make it to Miami.
When Cuban state television reported the next day that one of the passengers
had died, Martinez thought it was the pilot.
``I was crying for my brother-in-law, and when I realized I was really
crying for the death of my son ... well, I don't know any more if I am all right
in the head.''
Martinez said she has been living in a fog since her ex-husband called to
tell her their son was dead.
Since then, the phone she shares with her neighbors in the old apartment
house has hardly stopped ringing. She has gotten calls from the South Florida
congresswoman's office, exile groups in Miami, journalists, and Cuban
immigration officials saying that if and when she gets her U.S. visa her Cuban
passport and exit visa are ready.
Martinez said she spoke by telephone with her sister, Mercedes, but did not
ask about her motives for leaving. She also talked with her brother-in-law, whom
she said seems particularly conflicted about what they did.
Iglesias was a Communist Party member, son of a man who fought in the
revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power in 1959. His uncle, Joel Iglesias,
is well known in Cuba as the revolution's youngest commander, a former
adolescent aide-de-camp to Ernesto ``Che'' Guevara.
Iglesias' family was shocked by the flight, and remain ``very hurt,''
Martinez added. ``But they do love him, and family is family.''
She said Cuban officials have understood that concept more than American
officials, whom she described as ``very cold.''
She believes her son understood it the day of his death, when he pulled his
aunt Mercedes from the water before slipping under the waves himself.
``He always helped people,'' she said, sobbing. ``Up until the last hour
before his death he was always human.''
Elian's Miami Family Sues Reno, INS
By Adrian Sainz, Associated Press Writer
MIAMI, 28 (AP) - Elian Gonzalez's Miami relatives filed a lawsuit Thursday
against Attorney General Janet Reno (news - web sites), alleging the armed raid
that took the Cuban boy from their home and reunited him with his father was
illegal.
``The last time I saw anything like that was in films from postwar Germany
when the Nazis were invading people's homes without cause,'' said the family's
lawyer, Ron Guralnick.
The lawsuit filed in federal court claims Reno and the Immigration and
Naturalization Service used false statements to obtain the arrest and search
warrants used in the pre-dawn April 22 raid to seize the 6-year-old boy.
The Justice Department (news - web sites) defended the decisions made by its
leaders as appropriate under the circumstances.
``Unfortunately, the Gonzalez family's refusal to comply with a lawful
federal order and their statements that they would never give up the child
except by force compelled us to take enforcement actions,'' Justice Department
spokeswoman Carole Florman said. ``We still believe our actions were appropriate
and lawful.''
The INS has yet to see the lawsuit and will review it with the Justice
Department once it does, spokeswoman Maria Cardona said Thursday.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Elian's great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez; his
great-aunt, Angela; and their daughter, Marisleysis, Elian's second-cousin. They
had cared for Elian since November 1999, when the boy survived a boat crossing
from Cuba that killed his mother and 10 other people. The family then sought
custody of Elian to raise him in the United States.
Their lawsuit claims the raid violated the family's rights of expression and
assembly, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, and freedom from the
use of excessive force without due process of law.
The raid also was illegal, the lawsuit claims, because it acted against an
11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling preventing any party from taking Elian back
to Cuba.
After the raid, the Justice Department reunited Elian with his father in the
Washington area. Juan Miguel Gonzalez, Elian, his half-brother, and stepmother
lived in the United States for several weeks under the court's order.
After the Miami relatives exhausted all appeals to seek asylum for the boy,
the court's ruling expired and Elian returned to Cuba on June 28. He started the
second grade this month.
The lawsuit asks for unspecified compensatory damages for mental distress,
physical injury, and property damage, in addition to punitive damages.
The lawsuit also names INS director Doris Meissner, deputy attorney general
Eric Holder, and INS agent Betty Mills as defendants. Mills took Elian out of
the house and carried him into a waiting van.
Other defendants are the city of Miami, former Miami police chief William
O'Brien and INS agents that took part in the raid.
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