CNS News. November
27, 2001
Bush administration stands firm on US embargo against Cuba
By Jim Burns. CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer.
(CNSNews.com) - Even though four U.S. companies have signed contracts to
sell food to Cuba, the Bush administration made it clear on Tuesday: The U.S.
trade embargo against Cuba "stands firm as a U.S. foreign policy."
Lino Gutierrez, an assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere
affairs, told a Washington audience that it is Cuban leader Fidel Castro - not
the United States - who is having a change of heart on U.S.-Cuba trade.
According to Gutierrez, any U.S. companies that end up selling food and
medicine to Cuba will do so in full compliance with U.S. law. Congress
authorized food exports to Cuba last year, but at the same time it refused to
let Cuba tap into American sources of financing to make those food and medicine
purchases. The Cuban government has complained bitterly about the law.
After a damaging hurricane in Cuba earlier this month, four U.S. companies
signed contracts with Cuba - the first such contracts in four decades -- to
supply the communist nation with $20 million worth of food.
Representatives from Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Riceland Food and
ConAgra signed agreements with Cuba's state run company Alimport to provide
wheat, corn, soybeans and rice. The Commerce Department must now approve the
deals, in which Cuba must pay cash.
Earlier, the U.S. State Department offered to send emergency food and
medicine to Cuba, and it also offered to send a team of specialists to evaluate
the nation's humanitarian needs after the hurricane.
The Castro government politely refused the State Department offer, then
contradicted itself by proposing that the U.S. sell it food and medicine -- on
Cuba's terms.
"The change which has taken place here is that Castro has reversed
himself," Gutierrez said Tuesday.
He said it is Castro who is backing away from his prior insistence that Cuba
will not buy a single grain of American rice until the U.S. government permits
him to arrange U.S. financing for such purchases, and until Cuban goods can be
sold in the U.S.
"Castro has done a 180," Gutierrez said, while United States has
held firm: "Our policy continues to be to encourage a rapid, peaceful,
transition to a democratic Cuba and characterize a full respect for human rights
and open markets."
Gutierrez said the U.S. offer to send a State Dept. team to Cuba to assess
its post-hurricane needs still stands. But that's not what Castro wants, he
said: "What Cuba does want to do is purchase food and medicine to replenish
its civil defense stockpiles."
On another topic, Gutierrez described the Cuban military as a "disciplined
hierarchy and a wealth of economic strength that is well positioned to survive a
post-Castro transition."
He said the Cuban military is better off economically than are many other
institutions in Cuba.
As Fidel Castro ages, speculation grows about Cuba's future without its
longtime dictator.
See Earlier Story:
Report
Predicts Democracy Will Return To Cuba After Castro's Death (29 Oct. 2001)
CBS' 60 minutes under fire from Cuban exile groups
By Jim Burns. CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer, November 26,
2001.
(CNSNews.com) - Cuban exile groups are criticizing a report on CBS' 60
Minutes, which they say made it look like Cuban-Americans are propping up the
Castro regime. Despite criticism of the report, which focused on the money U.S.
residents are sending to their relatives in Cuba, CBS is sticking by its story.
"I think [CBS is] missing the major point. The major point is that
there is a distinction between people who care for and love their family members
and people who support dictatorial regimes. People sent money to family and
relatives in the bad days of the Soviet Union and people don't want their family
members to starve in Cuba," said Dennis Hays, executive director of the
Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF).
According to the 60 Minutes feature, Cubans use the American dollars to buy
modern appliances and other goods at shopping centers, but the money ends up
flowing into the coffers of the Castro government, undermining the U.S. trade
embargo that is in place against Cuba. The U.S. dollars are crucial to Castro's
economic survival, the report stated, especially after the Soviet Union, under
the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, cut off aid to Cuba several years ago.
However, Hays believes the CBS report began with what he called a "false
premise."
"The false premise is that people helping their families is somehow the
same as advocating support for Castro," said Hays.
Hays didn't say whether the CANF, one of the Castro government's biggest
critics, would file a protest against CBS. "We're taking a look at it,"
said Hays. 60 Minutes correspondent Leslie Stahl did not interview anyone from
the CANF for her report.
Don Hewitt, executive producer of 60 Minutes defended the broadcast.
"We make no apologies for the piece. I think we touched every base,"
said Hewitt in an interview with CNSNews.com.
Stahl did interview a young Miami couple that fled Cuba several years ago,
so they could, according to the broadcast, send U.S. dollars back home to their
family. She also interviewed Rep. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who is one of three
Cuban-Americans in Congress, and who opposes the practice of Americans sending
U.S. dollars to their relatives in Cuba.
Frank Calzon, executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, also said
the 60 Minutes report failed to make an important distinction.
"I don't believe anybody could be against a mother or a child sending
money to Cuban relatives. It is legal. That money goes to relatives. The money
made from tourism does not get to the Cuban relatives because it goes directly
to the government," Calzon said.
"Cubans have had for 40 years very little economic freedom," he
added. "What Castro has done is create a beggar mentality. You can send
money to your relatives to buy food but you cannot send money to relatives so
they can start up a dry cleaning establishment or a restaurant or a small
manufacturing company.
Related link
Cuba's
Currency Catch-22 / CBS
Castro calls American aid offer a good gesture
By Jim Burns. CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer. November 26,
2001
(CNSNews.com) - Cuban leader Fidel Castro calls the U.S. offer of
humanitarian aid in the wake of Hurricane Michelle a "good gesture."
Radio Havana reported Saturday that if the U.S. aid package comes through,
it would mark the first time since America imposed the economic embargo in 1961
that a commercial operation has actually taken place between the two countries.
Castro applauded the U.S. aid during a speech in the southwestern Cuban town
of Artemisa.
He also announced that because of the hurricane and the damage it caused,
the government will increase retirement benefits to Cuban senior citizens.
He also said that almost all the houses destroyed by the hurricane would be
rebuilt within a year. "No cyclone can derail this revolution or the spirit
of its people," Castro said.
The hurricane, according to government officials, also forced Castro to
remain in Cuba instead of attending the Ibero-American summit in Lima, Peru.
Officials said this is the first time Castro has missed the summit of Latin
American nations since the meetings began 11 years ago.
While Castro praised the United States ,albeit briefly, his foreign minister
denounced the U.S. during that Ibero-American summit, especially for continuing
the economic blockade against Cuba.
Felipe Perez Roque said in a Peruvian radio interview that Cuba is far from
being isolated. He said the United States is the one country that perpetrates
the blockade while at the same time finds itself "isolated on the world's
political stage."
Perez Roque contended the U.S. blockade hasn't affected Cuba because the
communist government has diplomatic relations with 171 countries and nearly 2
million tourists visited Cuba thus far this year.
Also at the summit, Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage said Saturday that the
Castro government had no reason to believe that the aid gesture and recent
offers of trade between the communist government and the United States indicate
any policy shift between the two countries.
Four American companies last week became the first in four decades since the
U.S. imposed economic embargo to sign trade agreements with Cuba. Those
companies will also supply about $20 million worth of food to Cuba as well.
Representatives from Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Riceland Food and
ConAgra signed agreements with Cuba's state run company Alimport to provide
wheat, corn, soybeans and rice.
"It's an isolated fact. We have no reason to see it as a policy shift,
rather as something that happened because of a hurricane that doesn't happen
every month in Cuba," Lage told a news conference after attending a summit
in Lima.
John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council said in
a statement, "All of the exports are expected to be completed by 10
December, 2001."
Earlier, the State Department offered food and medicine to Cuba and even
offered to send a team of specialists to evaluate the communist nation's
humanitarian needs. However, the Castro government said no and then contradicted
itself by proposing that the United States sell it food and medicine on Cuba's
terms.
The State Department said the United States would not accept the Castro
government's proposal.
Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) thinks Castro, by making this purchase, is
trying to divert attention from his links to international terrorism in the wake
of last September's terrorist attacks.
"This cash purchase by Castro, despite his repeated prior declarations
that he would never make such a purchase unless the U.S. embargo was lifted,
constitutes an attempt to divert attention from his clear links to international
terrorism," said Diaz-Balart in a statement.
"It also demonstrates the desperate pressures being felt by the Cuban
dictatorship at this time," he said. "To counter his desperation,
Castro seeks to convey the completely incorrect impression of movement toward a
relationship with the Bush administration."
President Bush has said repeatedly he would not lift the economic embargo
against Cuba unless Castro calls for free elections and frees political
prisoners.
Hurricane Michelle swept Cuba earlier this month, killing five people,
flattening thousands of houses and severely damaging crops.
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