From: "Walter Lippmann" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2002 23:51:37 +1100 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [CubaNews] Bush Hires Hard-Liners to Handle Cuba Policy Washington's response to Cuba's policy of opposition to terrorism and war, its cash purchases of $40 million worth of agricultural commodities, its quietly non-confrontational stance toward the Talibanishment at Guantanamo is now to ratchet up hostility toward Cuba by every possible step it can take. And these are but a few current examples. This article, which tells a lot, puts the policy of the Bush administration, which was not elected by a majority vote of the people of the United States, in the softest and most sanitized light. Omitted, for example is the massive campaign the US is carrying on against Cuba around the Human Rights Commission at Geneva, for just one single example. Omitted is Helms-Burton and Torricelli, the laws under which Washington openly proclaims its policy goal of the complete overthrow of the Cuban Revolution. "Free elections"? Like in the US in general and Florida in particular? Pardon me, but I need to barf. Washington is carrying out the policy which has been adopted for the past forty years by successive administrations of both political parties and by overwhelming majorities in the Congress. These foul chickens have now come home to roost. Washington's historic hostility toward Cuba is an albatross which harms the interests of many sectors in business, agriculture and the great majority of the people of the United States. It and and must be ended. Today, as commercial and agricultural interests see the chance to make substantial business connections and money, Cuban Americans have become, by all accounts, the largest group of violators of the travel ban. And after Elian Gonzalez, a Cuban child was kidnapped, held and manipulated by Miami rightists, most people in the US came to understand that Cuba, whatever its problems, is a place where children can and should grow up with their parents. Washington is even more glaringly out of step with the sentiments of a majority of the people in the United States. It's the Bush administration which is out of step and that is the reality it is moving desperately to conceal. Cuba's struggle for national independence and self- determination was going on long before Fidel Castro was born and the Cuban Revolution was successful. Cuba's policy is simple: it want's Washington, like it wants all countries, to respect Cuba's independence. It wants just normalization of relations with the US, something Washington has resisted for all these 40+ years. It's a struggle which can and will be won. Cuba has survived forty years of blockade and the fall of the Soviet Union. It will survive this, too... ================================== February 3, 2002 Bush Hires Hard-Liners to Handle Cuba Policy By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 - At a time when Cuba is exhibiting increasing signs of reaching out to the United States, the Bush administration is filling its Latin America policy ranks with officials known for a hard-line stance toward Fidel Castro's government. Several incoming officials advocate an unyielding hostility toward Cuba and the maintenance, if not strengthening, of a trade embargo that is four decades old. The policy being promoted by people like Otto J. Reich, a Cuban exile who is the State Department's top policy maker for Latin America, is increasingly placing the administration at odds with farmers, business executives and a growing number of members of Congress - including many Republicans - who have been pushing for trade with Cuba. But the hard line is still an article of faith among many Cuban-Americans. "The Cuban-Americans sense the momentum is moving away from their position quite rapidly, and they're trying to put in some fire walls," said Sally Grooms Cowal, director of the Cuba Policy Foundation, a bipartisan group that advocates an easing of sanctions. In recent months, Cuba has made gestures that indicate an eagerness to set relations with Washington on a new track. The Castro government has bought more than $40 million in food from the United States; it has withheld criticism of the use of the United States Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay to house captives; and it has offered to increase cooperation on a variety of issues, including drug trafficking and fighting terrorism. Mr. Castro has invited former President Jimmy Carter, who has been an intermediary between Washington and hostile nations, to visit, said Deanna Congileo, a Carter spokeswoman. He has not decided whether he will go, she said. Taken together, the moves reflect the most significant outreach since 1996, when Cuba shot down two civilian planes flown by Cuban-American activists and the United States responded by tightening sanctions. Yet the overtures have fallen flat with the Bush administration. The State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, said this week that the Cubans had no reason to expect the United States to ease its policy. "Since you give me the opportunity," he said, "let me try to disabuse them of this notion. Cuba has not taken any of the steps necessary to make improvement of relations possible." Cuba must free political prisoners, carry out free elections or otherwise guarantee human rights, Mr. Boucher said. Other officials dismissed Mr. Castro's outreach as part of a ploy to get the United States to bail out Cuba's floundering economy. In addition to Mr. Reich, a former Reagan administration official and ambassador to Venezuela, the other top diplomat for the Western Hemisphere is his deputy, Lino Gutierrez, a former ambassador to Nicaragua. Both are Cuban-Americans identified with a no-dialogue policy. Another Cuban-American, Emilio Gonzalez, is a deputy of the National Security Council to handle Caribbean affairs, including Cuba. "Especially Cuba," said Colonel Gonzalez, a former West Point instructor who most recently served at the United States Southern Command in Miami. On Capitol Hill, Jose Cardenas is taking over the Latin America portfolio on the minority staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. For much of the last decade, he has been a lobbyist for the exile Cuban American National Foundation's drive to preserve sanctions. The defense of a tough line looms so large, some officials say, that new appointees in Latin American affairs face a litmus test on Cuba. President Bush waved Mr. Reich, the top custodian of Cuba policy for the State Department, into office with a recess appointment last month after Senate Democrats blocked his confirmation on the grounds that he had behaved unethically in the Reagan White House and that he was too partisan. Mr. Reich was unavailable for comment, a spokesman said. In a speech in November 2000, he outlined his views on Cuba. "Let me say that while popular in some circles, blaming U.S. policy for Cuba's ills is simply wrong," he said. "The Castro regime controls and directs the nature and scale of all foreign interaction with Cuban citizens." That view is increasingly under fire from farm groups who are eager to sell more of their products to Cuba, and their allies in Congress. Many of the new critics are Republicans who insist the current policy is archaic or self-defeating. Representative Jo Ann Emerson, Republican of Missouri, who was reached this week at a conference in Mexico on selling agriculture products to Cuba, said lawmakers' changing views had placed them on a collision course with the administration. "There's no doubt that a majority of our colleagues in the Senate and the House support more trade with Cuba and lifting the travel ban, which is the heart of it all," she said. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company -- _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
