Posted on Thu, Apr. 04, 2002   
Saint Paul Pioneer Press

Carter's proposed visit to Cuba would undermine U.S. policy
BY EVERETT E. BRIGGS
Commentator

Please, Mr. President, don't go to Cuba. No, not George W. Bush. Former President Carter says he is tired of the U.S. embargo on Cuba and wants to visit Havana. He has asked the Bush administration for its approval.

Carter's request poses a dilemma for the White House. If it says no, that could spark a public relations uproar. But to let a former U.S. president stumble into Castro's warm embrace would undercut a key element of the administration's Latin American policy, which is to support democracy, justice and freedom throughout the hemisphere. None of these exist in Cuba, a country with which we do not have formal relations and which has long been classified a terrorist state.

The president's staff is trying to figure out what to do. One suggestion is that Carter be given some human rights mission in the hope that he might shake his finger at Castro (whose regime has been regularly condemned by the U.N. Human Rights Commission).

According to U.S. law, Americans wanting to visit Cuba have to establish to the U.S. Treasury's satisfaction that their purpose is other than tourism or business. Such activity is proscribed by an embargo designed to keep Americans from contributing in any way financially to the regime. Do-gooders, students and the news media are among those exempted from the embargo.

Carter's views of the embargo are contrary to longstanding tradition: Former presidents are expected to be respectful of the incumbent president's constitutional authority to run foreign affairs. They're supposed to avoid kibbitzing from the sidelines.

Our former president has sought with success to refurbish an image tarnished by a series of dismal foreign-policy failures while in office. These went beyond the Iran hostage crisis and included Cuba.

After all, it was during the Carter years that a misguided attempt at detente with Castro encouraged the dictator to send troops to Africa, underwrite and direct communist revolutions in Grenada and Nicaragua, and back rebel groups in Central America and Colombia.

Today Carter is properly revered around the world for his work with Habitat for Humanity, promotion of human rights and leadership in monitoring foreign elections. For more than 20 years, he has been something of a model ex-president — until now at least.

But tradition aside, Carter's proposed visit to Cuba is a rotten idea. His visit would be seized upon by Castro as proof that he is recognized as a legitimate world leader and used to further demoralize opposition at home. Any visit to Cuba by anyone with an ounce of international prestige becomes Castro's play thing. Visits by foreign dignitaries to Cuba only serve to harden this megalomaniac's deadly rule.

If opposition to the embargo is driving Carter's newfound interest in Cuba, the place to mount a campaign to change U.S. policy is here at home. More likely what is behind Carter's wish to visit Cuba is simple ego: the conceit of many "personalities" that they can make a difference by simply talking to tyrants like Castro.

The way to deal with the Castros of the world is to treat them like pariahs, not fall prey to what a former American diplomat called the "flies-on-horse-manure syndrome."

Whatever is motivating Carter, the timing of a visit couldn't be worse. There are persistent reports that Castro is sick and losing his grip; and among the signs and portents that encourage Cuba's democratic dissidents was what happened to Castro in Mexico earlier this month.

At the international aid conference in Monterrey, Castro found himself eclipsed by the presence of real world leaders, including George W. Bush. Castro went home mad, complaining that the Mexican hosts had snubbed him.

This was all to the good. Anything that diminishes Castro's prestige diminishes his authority.

Just think of the photos that would circle the globe of a beaming Carter in an adhesive abrazo with the bearded tyrant. The long-suffering Cuban people don't need this. Nor does Carter.

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Everrett Briggs, ambassador to Panama from 1982 to 1986, was President George H.W. Bush's principal adviser on Latin America. Distributed by the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service 



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