House Votes to Lift Cuba Travel Ban - How Can This Be Good for the U.S.?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For the third time in as many years, the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday defied White House veto threats and supported lifting the four-decades-old ban on Americans traveling to Cuba.

The House voted 262-167 to lift the travel restrictions as it debated an $18.5 billion bill funding the U.S. Treasury and general government operations in the next fiscal year. It is expected to pass the spending bill sometime on Wednesday.

In the past, the Cuba travel effort has failed in the Senate. This year, however, the Senate also is moving to lift the ban, setting up a clash with President Bush.

The White House last week threatened to veto any change in U.S. policy toward Cuba, accusing Congress of providing "a helping hand to a desperate and repressive regime."

But proponents of ending the travel ban say it infringes on U.S. citizens' constitutional right to travel freely and has demonstrably failed to weaken the grip of President Fidel Castro on the Caribbean island nation.

"For 42 years we've had the same, failed policy," said Arizona Republican Rep. Jeff Flake, the chief House sponsor of the effort. "And the question occurs: after 42 years isn't it about time to decide maybe we need a change here?"

House Republican leaders and the influential U.S. Cuban exile community staunchly oppose the move, arguing that the ban should be lifted only once Castro releases political prisoners and returns fugitives from U.S. justice.

"Any revenue from increased travel or trade will go to support Castro's regime, and the Cuban people will continue to live lives of oppression and poverty," said New Jersey Republican Rep. Chris Smith.

House leaders sought to outflank the vote on the travel ban by trying to add a proviso that it could only be lifted if Bush certified Cuba was not developing biological weapons or aiding terrorists -- but the move was rejected by the House.

Currently, U.S. citizens must get a license from the U.S. Treasury to travel to Cuba, and those are generally limited to Cuban-Americans visiting family, journalists, academics, government officials and groups on humanitarian missions.

But Americans are increasingly finding ways to reach Cuba anyway by traveling through third countries, with an estimated 176,000 visiting the island in 2001. The House action would cut the funds the Treasury uses to enforce the ban.

The House, as it did last year, also rejected a bid to lift the full U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, voting 226 to 204 against the broader move.

But it did back amendments to loosen rules limiting the amount of money U.S.-based Cubans can remit to relatives on the island each year, and to make it easier for U.S. farmers to take advantage of an earlier easing of curbs on food sales.

Don't subsidize a tyrant*** While the embargo restricts most U.S.-Cuba trade, it does not impose a humanitarian burden. Cuba frequently has bought wheat from Canada, rice from Vietnam, and medicine from Europe, Asia and Latin America. Donations of food and clothing and the licensed sale of U.S. medical products are permitted. The real cause of Cuba's hardship is not the embargo but the state's Soviet-style economy. Traditional exports such as sugar cost the regime more to produce than they sell for on the global market. Tourism brings in hard currency but not nearly enough to provide for Cuba's needs. Debt payments are so uncertain that major trade partners often must extend new loans.***

Friends of Fidel*** Louisiana rice and Illinois wheat producers should not assume that selling to Havana is synonymous with getting paid. U.S taxpayers should be wary. Mr. Castro desperately needs credits and subsidies, and Washington is being pressured to provide them. If the United States begins to subsidize trade with Cuba estimated at $100 million a year five years from now, U.S. taxpayers could be holding, or paying off, a $500 million tab. That´s real money.

Before extending Mr. Castro credit, grain growers should visit any street corner in Manhattan and observe a game played there. Called three-card monte, it consists of convincing the player that he knows exactly where the card carrying his money is. Until it disappears. In this game, the gambler takes his own chances. Where trade with Mr. Castro is concerned, the U.S. taxpayer will be left holding the losing card.***

Europe Excludes Cuba From Aid Funds [Full text] NADI, Fiji (AP) - The European Union has excluded Cuba from a multibillion-dollar pool of aid because of its poor human rights record and lack of democracy, a spokesman for a group of former European colonies said Friday. Cuba is a new member of the African Caribbean Pacific group, or ACP, which is holding a leaders' summit at a palm-fringed island resort near the Fijian town of Nadi. The 63 national delegations are trying to forge a single negotiating position ahead of trade talks with Brussels in September. Central to the talks is a 25-year pact signed by the EU and ACP in 2000, known as the Cotonou agreement, which promises $12.7 billion in aid to ACP states over the next five years if they show efforts to improve human rights and root out corruption.

As a latecomer to the ACP, Cuba has not signed Cotonou. EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy, who is attending the summit, on Friday rejected overtures from ACP leaders to give Cuba quick access to the agreement, said ACP spokesman Hegel Goutier. The EU believes Cuba cannot satisfy basic principles of the agreement, especially with respect to democracy and human rights, said Billie Miller, deputy prime minister of Barbados, who heads the Caribbean grouping at the summit. Miller said she had formally appealed on behalf of Caribbean nations to the EU to fast track Cuba's inclusion. The head of Cuba's delegation, Ricardo Cabrisas, called the EU decision "a humiliation and slap in the face for Cuba," Goutier said. Lamy told delegates that the EU wanted to see more political reform from Havana, Goutier said. [End]

Crack down on Castro*** It doesn't end there. Cuba is working with Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to undermine America. In a meeting with Mr. Khamenei last year, Mr. Castro said that, in cooperation with each other, Iran and Cuba can destroy America. He added that "the United States regime is very weak, and we are witnessing this weakness from close up." Senior State Department officials have discussed publicly the threat of Cuba's bioterrorism program. As we rush to protect our citizens from smallpox and anthrax, Mr. Castro is diverting the resources of his desperately poor economy to offensive biological-warfare research and development, and selling biotechnology to other rogue states. "We are concerned that such technology could support bioweapons programs in those states," says John Bolton, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security.

Even more than with al Qaeda terrorists based in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Somalia, Cuba's geographic proximity to the United States offers Mr. Castro's agents opportunities to infiltrate and gain access to U.S. territory and our critical infrastructure. In this connection, the current regulations on U.S.-Cuba travel are a crucial tool for law enforcement to prevent the use of bioweapons against the American people. This week, Congress will vote on legislation to lift aspects of the embargo on Cuba. Doing so at this time would be a grave mistake. The theory of the legislation is that more travel and trade with Cuba will liberalize the regime - but in reality, virtually all of the money that Americans might spend in Cuba will go to the government. Worse, a significant expansion of human traffic between our nation and Cuba would hopelessly complicate the job of Customs, the FBI and counter-terrorism officials who are trying to protect against the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction into the United States.***

Fidel Castro - Cuba

North Dakota Lands Cuban Grain Deals - Who Will Benefit?*** HAVANA (AP) - Members of a North Dakota delegation hoping to sell more of their state's grain to communist Cuba said Tuesday they were already working on new sales contracts during the first full day of their trade mission. "We are looking to get some free time today so we can call and check on some prices," North Dakota Farm Bureau President Eric Aasmundstad said as the group toured a wheat milling plant. "That's how far along we are," he said, declining to provide specifics until contracts were signed.

"Our discussions have gone very well and we are hopeful that we will be leaving here with some good contracts," added Gov. John Hoeven, who with Aasmundstad is heading the four-mission that began Monday. Delegation members said they were not pushing for a meeting with President Fidel Castro and are instead focusing on doing as much business as possible before they return home on Thursday. The visit by Hoeven comes as American farm representatives press Congress to expand a 2-year-old law allowing direct sales of food to the island, an exception to sanctions prohibiting most trade with the island.

Among measures now being considered by U.S. lawmakers is one that would allow financing for American food sales to Cuba - now conducted on a cash basis. Pedro Alvarez, president of the Cuban food import concern Alimport, said Monday his county could buy as much as 60 to 70 percent of all imported food from the United States if financing were allowed. ***

The U.S. taxpayer is going to end up subsidizing communism.

EU hoping for developing world summit to agree on free trade talks - Castro and Mugabe take a pass*** NADI, Fiji - The European Union wants a group of poor nations to agree to a common position on negotiating free trade deals with Brussels, an EU official said Monday. But observers said the unwieldy nature of the 78-nation grouping of African, Caribbean and Pacific island nations makes any unified position from the summit unlikely. The third African Caribbean Pacific summit was to start Tuesday at a palm-fringed resort in Fiji's palm-fringed city of Nadi, as the member states prepare to negotiate free trade agreements with the EU in September. According to the African Caribbean Pacific or ACP secretariat, about 63 national leaders are attending, including South African President Thabo Mbeki. Two of its most controversial leaders - Cuba's Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe - will not be there.

The European Union is telling the ACP - which accounts for more than 650 million people and includes 40 of the world's poorest countries - that if they want to keep getting European aid, they will have to start removing their trade barriers to Europe's exports. Under an agreement signed between the group's members and the EU in 2000 at Cotonou in the African state of Benin, the European Union is also linking trade and aid to ACP states which impose safeguards to prevent corruption.***

Exile pilots brave foul weather, mourn comrades

March 2, 1996
Web Posted at: 11:20 p.m. EST
KEY WEST, Florida (CNN) -- Braving harsh, stormy weather Saturday, 10 private planes flew over the area where two U.S. civilian aircraft were shot down by Cuban military jets last weekend.
Most of the planes were piloted by members of the Miami-based exile group, Brothers to the Rescue, which also organized Saturday's flotilla of two dozen small boats that eventually had to return home because of the foul weather.
Before heading back to Florida, the vessels held a brief memorial service for the four men who are presumed dead in the shoot-down.
The group had wanted to conduct its maritime service in the area where the planes were destroyed, which Brothers to the Rescue says is about 21 miles north of Havana.
But choppy seas with waves reaching 7 feet and winds at 17 mph forced the flotilla to hold the service about 23 miles short of its destination.
Pilots carried bouquets and funeral wreaths to be dropped in the ocean spot where the planes were thought to have gone down. A smoke flare was also to be tossed out of one of the airplanes to mark the area.
The U.S. Coast Guard accompanied the flotilla and provided a C-130 escort for the civilian airplanes.
Brothers to the Rescue leader Jose Basulto, who piloted a plane that survived last Saturday's shoot-down, said he was relieved that he had "the opportunity to say a last goodbye to my brothers."
Albright blasts Castro

Later in the evening, a community memorial service at Miami's Orange Bowl stadium was packed with some 45,000 anti-Fidel Castro exiles.
Many in the crowd cheered and wept as two Brothers' planes flew over the stadium. Waving U.S. and Cuban flags, the Cuban exiles banged on the bleachers and chanted, "Libertad! Libertad!"
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright, who spoke at the service, called the four downed pilots "martyrs" in the cause of freedom.

Albright addressed the crowd from a platform decorated with elaborate floral wreaths, a cross, and large photographs of the four men propped at her feet. The program included hymns, the Cuban national anthem, and prayers.
In a speech frequently broken by thunderous applause, Albright said America would protect its citizens in international waters and international skies. "We will tighten sanctions against the government of Cuba, but without harming the people we want to help.
" ... Castro has been tried and convicted in the court of world opinion for his outrageous and brutal crime," Albright said.
Brothers to the Rescue has said its two planes downed a week earlier by Cuban MiGs flying over international waters were on a routine mission to search for Cuban rafters.
Havana, however, said the planes were blasted out of the sky for violating its airspace and ignoring warnings to leave.
Castro told Time magazine in an interview this week he would not tolerate any infringement of his country's territory. Castro said the U.S. failure to discourage American flights from frequently flying over Cuba, dropping leaflets, and provoking civil unrest was creating a condition of "distrust."
CNN has learned that the Cuban government will present its side of the shoot-down to the International Civilian Aviation Organization in Canada.
A Cuban delegation is expected to arrive in Montreal on Wednesday to present its case. The organization consists of more than 180 nations, including Cuba and the United States, and is a specialized agency of the United Nations.
Source

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