|
Yahoo!
By Carolyn Skorneck, Associated Press Writer. Thu Mar 14, 8:47 PM ET
WASHINGTON - Given the chance to bash Fidel Castro while defending the Bush
administration's policy of tracking down and fining Americans who visit Cuba,
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill took a pass.
Instead, he said, he would prefer that the money go toward chasing
terrorists, as suggested by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., chairman of the Senate
Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Treasury Department.
"If I had the discretion for applying the resources, I would agree with
you completely," O'Neill said at a subcommittee hearing Thursday.
His view was directly at odds with the Bush administration position, which
President Bush (news - web sites) pushed both last June and in January.
Sen. Bob Graham (news), D-Fla., a longtime critic of Castro, took issue with
O'Neill's stance and suggested it might mean a short Cabinet tenure for O'Neill.
"I don't think he's expressing the policy of the Bush administration,
and I don't know if you should give him Mike Parker's telephone number as to
what happens when people go before Congress and begin expressing opinions that
are not part of the head coach's game plan," said Graham, chairman of the
Senate Intelligence Committee.
The president fired Parker as civilian head of the Army Corps of Engineers
last week, shortly after he criticized Bush's proposed budget for the Corps.
Later, O'Neill issued a clarifying statement. "I fully support strong
enforcement of the Cuba travel ban as set out by the president," he said. "I
am not seeking any change in the law or our enforcement of it. I was reiterating
the administration's view that common sense and discretion are critical in the
war on terror. If any of my comments indicated otherwise, that was not my
intention."
At the hearing, O'Neill called for a review of laws "that tell us what
we must do," and change them to "provide sensible discretion."
Such changes would enable the department to "get much more value for the
American people."
"I'm very much inclined to want to be where you are," O'Neill told
Dorgan, "and it would be very helpful if we could work together ... so that
we do not put ourselves in violation of the law because we exercise what seems
like common-sense discretion."
Dorgan is one of many in Congress who want to ease commerce and U.S. travel
restrictions, saying it would increase farm and pharmaceutical exports while
also giving visiting Americans the chance to promote democratic values among
ordinary Cubans.
The senator told O'Neill that, like police officers, his department already
has discretion.
"If jaywalking is occurring at the same time a bank robbery is
occurring, law enforcement officers deal with the bank robbery," Dorgan
said. "That discretion exists all over."
He said he hoped that Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control
"would understand that there is a greater need to deal with the terrorist
threat these days than the threat of a retired teacher bicycling through Cuba."
Dorgan held a hearing last month pointing to a boost in enforcement of the
travel ban, with the number of fines levied increasing from 188 in 2000, the
Clinton administration's last year, to 766 in 2001, the Bush administration's
first year.
The ban actually bars U.S. citizens from spending money in Cuba, which is
why it is enforced by the Treasury Department.
In contrast to O'Neill's appearance, a State Department official spoke
strongly against U.S. travel to and commerce with the island nation in an
address Tuesday to a Washington-based think tank.
Cuban-born Otto Reich, the assistant secretary of state for Western
Hemisphere affairs, said before the Center for Strategic and International
Studies that the United States should not be "throwing a lifeline to a
failed, corrupt, dictatorial, murderous regime." | 
