Friday January 12, 3:57 pm Eastern Time. Press Release.
SOURCE: Cuban American National Foundation
Senator looks to replicate success of Poland policy under Reagan-Bush
WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- The Cuban American National Foundation
today joined Senator Jesse Helms in urging a reinvigorated U.S.-Cuba policy
under the administration of George W. Bush. The CANF said it would work to
implement a new Cuba policy modeled, in the Senator's words, after ``the
successful policies that the Reagan-Bush Administration used in the 1980s to
undermine Communism in Poland.'' The Senator's remarks came in a major foreign
policy speech delivered yesterday at the American Enterprise Institute in
Washington.
``We agree completely with Senator Helms that now is the time for renewed
action,'' said CANF Chairman Jorge Mas. ``U.S. policy towards Cuba has been
stuck in idle for eight years. As the Senator has noted, the prototype for
success already exists in bringing freedom and democracy to 11 million suffering
Cubans. Our goal is to make that vision a reality.''
Mas said he was particularly encouraged by Helms's continued support, as
part of a reinvigorated policy, for an initiative to provide official U.S.
humanitarian aid directly to the Cuban people. That aid, first proposed in 1998
and supported by the CANF, would be delivered, not through the Cuban government,
but through private charitable institutions functioning on the island. Such
assistance would also serve to help give Cubans independence from the State,
which now controls their lives by controlling their access to food, medicine,
and other daily necessities.
In his speech Helms said the current political environment provided a
``golden opportunity'' for the incoming George W. Bush administration for a new
and bold U.S. policy towards Cuba, and said, ``In the 1980s, the U.S. hastened
Poland's democratic transformation by isolating the communist regime in Warsaw,
while at the same time actively lifting the isolation of the Polish
people-supporting the democratic opposition and cultivating an emerging civil
society with financial and other means of support. We must do the same thing in
Cuba. ... Come January 20th, I intend to work with the Bush Administration to do
for the people of Cuba what the United States did for the people of Poland
twenty years ago.''
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