Embargo law due for a tweak says an author

Posted on Sat, Mar. 18, 2006

CUBA
Embargo law due for a tweak, says an author

Ten years later, the U.S. government's reluctance to apply the
Helms-Burton Act continues, as does the debate over the anti-Castro law.
BY PABLO BACHELET
pbachelet@MiamiHerald.com

WASHINGTON - Ten years after the controversial Helms-Burton Act
tightened the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba, one of its staunchest
supporters now says that some of its key passages may need to be changed.

Back in 1996, President Clinton signed the Cuban Liberty and Democratic
Solidarity (Libertad) Act, which provided support for Cuban dissidents
and threatened lawsuits against foreigners who invested in Cuban
properties seized from U.S. subjects and businesses.

It also detailed what Cuba needed to do before the embargo could be
lifted: for instance, when a transition government would have to hold
elections -- within 18 months -- and who could head that government, not
Fidel Castro or his brother Raúl.

Miami Republican Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart, who drafted parts of the law,
said he's generally pleased with Helms-Burton because it took key
elements of Cuba policy out of the president's hands and thereby allowed
the embargo ``to survive the second four years of the Clinton
administration.''

But the law also contains unnecessary provisions, he added.
''Legislating is never a pretty process,'' he told The Miami Herald.

CONDITIONS

Díaz-Balart says he favors paring the conditions for lifting the embargo
to three: Cuba must free all political prisoners and allow exiles to
return, opposition political parties must be legalized, and the
government must declare it will hold democratic elections ``in six
months, one year, two years, three years.''

And what about the rest of Helms-Burton, including the clause that bars
Fidel or Raúl Castro from heading a transition government? Díaz-Balart
makes it clear that if Raúl met the three conditions, he would deal with
Raúl.

''That's what I call static,'' Díaz-Balart said. ``I don't care what the
name is. The [real] name is legitimacy.''

If required, Helms-Burton could be changed ''in 72 hours'' to make it
easier to lift the embargo, he added.

The Castro brothers have given no sign that they would consider
Díaz-Balart's proposals for change. But his remarks nevertheless have
raised some eyebrows among Cuba observers.

Tomas Bilbao, executive director of the Cuba Study Group, made up of
moderate exiles who back a peaceful transition in Cuba, said
Díaz-Balart's statements were ``a smart change in focus.''

''The congressman recognizes that the all-or-nothing approach [in
Helms-Burton] is an impediment to bringing about a change,'' said
Bilbao, director of operations for Florida Republican Sen. Mel
Martínez's 2003 campaign.

Clinton signed the controversial Helms-Burton bill in 1996 amid the
indignation that followed the shootdown by Cuban MiGs just weeks before
of two small planes flown by the Miami-based Brothers to the Rescue.
Four men were killed.

Critics of the law say it limits the role the U.S. government can play
in Cuba after Castro.

''Giving people reason to believe that the United States sees itself as
the ultimate arbiter of what happens in Cuba, which government is good
or bad, which government is acceptable or not, which one is democratic
or not . . . undermines the objective of the U.S. playing a positive
role in promoting a peaceful democratic transition in Cuba,'' said
Richard Nuccio, a Clinton White House advisor on Cuba.

LAW'S IMPACT

The Cuban government, which has attacked the provisions as a galling
example of U.S. interventionism, estimates that Helms-Burton has cost
the island $82 billion in potential investments. But it also oddly
claimed that the government weathered the law's impacts. The law was
passed when Cuba was opening itself up to foreign investments for the
first time since the 1950s.

''They tried to score a home run on us, and we split their bat,'' the
newspaper Juventud Rebelde said on its front page on March 12, when
Helms-Burton turned 10 years old.

Many in the Cuban-American community still back the legislation, largely
drafted by Roger Noriega and Dan Fisk, then respectively aides to Sen.
Jesse Helms of North Carolina and Rep. Dan Brown of Indiana, both
Republicans.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Miami Republican, said the law put an
economic stranglehold on Castro, brought new attention to rights abuses
in the island and ``provided help for human rights activists and
pro-democracy forces in Cuba.''

Helms-Burton also generated international protests because it extended
the reach of U.S. courts. Its Title III, which lets U.S. residents use
U.S. courts to sue foreigners who invest in confiscated U.S. properties
in Cuba, has been consistently waived by both the Clinton and Bush
administration.

Title IV, which strips executives and owners of foreign companies that
invest in Cuba of their U.S. visas, has been selectively used, much to
the irritation of Cuban-American lobbyists. The State Department has
taken away visas, or threatened to do so, of Canadian, Mexican and
Jamaican investors, but not of the more powerful Europeans.

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