(Washington, D.C.): This week seems likely to be remembered as one that lives in infamy as a result of the decision by influential figures in the Republican Party and its bloc on Capitol Hill that it is better, to coin a phrase, to switch than fight the most important windfalls to come Fidel Castro's way since the Cuban missile crisis. First, unless the Supreme Court intervenes, Elian Gonzales will be forced on Wednesday to return to the national prison that his mother died trying to save him from when they fled Cuba last November.

Second, the House leadership is said to have given up its principled opposition to the easing of the U.S. embargo against Cuba so as to allow the sale of food and medicines to Cuba. This is an idea that is said to enjoy the support of America's hard-pressed farmers. Whether that is true or not, the reason this effort has momentum is not because of small, single-family farms. Rather it is because it is backed by the immense political power and financial resources of Archers Daniels Midlands and other interested agribusinesses.

Worse yet, the ADM crowd will not be satisfied with merely being granted the authority to provide food to Cuba. Since Castro's regime has no money with which to buy American products, he and his friends will insist that Congress authorize taxpayer subsidies (as in the past, it has infamously done via commodity credits, loans and guarantees). This prospect -- heretofore used to provide U.S. legitimacy and life support to such dubious customers as the Iraq and Gorbachev's Soviet Union -- risks returning U.S. agricultural policy to a cynical, wired affair that permits a hand-out exploited to the fullest by agribusinesses like ADM. It is all the more outrageous insofar as the Clinton-Gore Administration is simultaneously demanding in the World Trade Organization that other governments reduce their agricultural subsidy programs.

Three recent pieces in the press deserve notice in this regard: 1) Georgie Ann Geyer's essay on Cuba that appeared in the Washington Times last Thursday that puts the idea of aiding Castro into its appropriate, appalling political and strategic context. 2) An op.ed. article by the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Jesse Helms that describes the abiding, deplorable conditions in Cuba and the folly of believing that its citizens will benefit under present and foreseeable circumstances from U.S. assistance and investment. And 3) an editorial that ran in the Times' Sunday editions yesterday, which described the malevolent role Castro is still playing internationally, as well as at home.

Washington Times, 22 June 2000

Universal Press Syndicate

Actions that Bespeak Collusion

By Georgie Anne Geyer

The President is out everywhere, indiscriminately "legacy-seeking," and if that takes him to Havana, so be it! American companies, backed by the farm lobbies, are out trying to get what they dream to be the "new Cuban market." Meanwhile, utopians on the American Left are sure that, by thus "opening" to Fidel Castro, the hoary Cuban caudillo will change overnight.

My, my, it's really a wonder to think that all of that has now come out of the strange and as yet-unsettled case of little Elian Gonzalez! Yet, as a matter of fact, it has. And as the catalystic boy withers away here with his parents awaiting court procedures, the entire world he has come to personify is changing in amazing ways.

In public, for instance, administration spokesmen have said carefully that the Clinton administration has not changed its policy of the containment of Cuba at all. Yet, the acts that they have taken have without exception belie that contention.

It is now clear that, in the case of six-year-old Elian, the administration at every step of the way worked in conjunction with the Cuban government to get him back to Cuba. We now know that this even took even the form of colluding with the Castro government. Indeed, State Dept. documents obtained by a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act request, has an administration official writing that the State Dept. "wants to have a daily conference call to coordinate press guidance and communications with the Cubans."

Another document points clearly to the fact that the State Dept., even while at first denying it, did actually encourage the visit of the grandmothers, although only with the assurance that the Immigration and Naturalization Service "not be involved." This was followed by the administration's unconscionable refusal to allow any American press to see the boy and his family once he was housed in or near Washington, even though pictures did finally emerge of Elian, the little Communist Pioneer, dressed in Communist garb.

Every act of the American government since then has only backed up this obvious tilt toward trying, yet once again, to make peace with Castro. Only this time, the attempt must be accomplished before Bill Clinton leaves office ---and thus square off one more pesky corner of his elusive "legacy."

When the famous Cuban baseball star Andy Morales, who was one of the stars at last spring's Cuban-American game in Baltimore, was apprehended off Florida early in June trying to escape and was sent back to Cuba by U.S. immigration authorities, that act marked an entirely new stage of immigration relations---ballplayers had until then been considered immediately accepted emigrants. At the same time, over the last two years, unnoted by most Americans, the Clinton administration has winked mammothly at its own restrictions against travel to Cuba---last year alone, l35,000 Americans illegally visited Cuba without one serious complaint from the American government.

At the same time, American companies, led by Archer Daniels Midland Company with its long-time chief Dwayne Andreas in the forefront, backed by the American farm lobby, has been frenetically active in trying to "open" Cuba to American products and agricultural goods through lifting the American embargo against Cuba. Andreas, for instance, who has visited the island many times to try to "do business" with Castro, was the central figure in bringing the Elian grandmothers here---indeed, his donations to the National Council of Churches funded their visit, which was designed to make the American people look favorably upon both Elian and Cuba.

When you factor into all of these sinuous doings the fact that President Clinton is also terrified that Castro will unleash another immigration boatlift against American shores (as, indeed, Castro threatened to do when the Elian case began), the entire equations begin to round out.

The naivete and the foolishness embedded in the thinking behind these dreams of rapprochement, of legacy and of great wealth to be found in Cuba are stunning.

First of all, there is no money there to buy goods. Even before the fall of its Soviet patrons, the Cuban government was essentially bankrupt. It stopped paying its foreign debt as early as l986 and now owes more than $l5 billion dollars. But Castro's thinking is, as always, Machiavellianly clever: So what if he cannot pay for the products that the "americanos" seem so intent upon forcing upon him? If the embargo is lifted and he gets U.S. lines of credit to buy in America, it is only the American taxpayer who will have to pay!

Moreover, American business' romantic dreams of "being first" to "do business" in Cuba---and of changing Cuba through tourism and commerce---are, in truth, just that. Castro has no interest, as he has shown over and over, in improving the lot of his people---that would open him to competition for power. He wants only to strengthen his dictatorship through carefully chosen and controlled deals with the U.S. which would give him exactly what he wants---and no outside influence. (Even today, his "labor" policy is that he "gives" the few foreign companies in Cuba workers, like medieval serfs; the companies then pay him in dollars and Castro pays his serfs in worthless pesos.)

But finally, I doubt that even a restricted opening like that that would occur. For the opponents of lifting the embargo and of President Clinton's search for legacy in Cuba ---have a powerful alley. This ally is Fidel Castro himself.

For Castro cannot ever really countenance any foreign influence of any kind in Cuba. He will play with the "americanos" over business and over the embargo---in exactly the same way he has for 41 years played with the Cuban people, first granting them some freedoms, then seizing them back---but he does not seriously mean it in any real sense for a minute.

The presence of any other power center whatsoever is to him an inimical threat to his total power.

So in the end, Castro will doubtless save our grasping businessmen and our naïve utopians from themselves. But one wonders why, after all these years, they still should need such salvation.

New York Times, 24 June 2000

On Trade, Cuba is Not China

By Senator Jesse Helms

Some lawmakers, including a number of Republicans, have argued in recent weeks that if Congress believes trade will promote democratic change in China, then why not adopt the same policy for Cuba? Here is why: Cuba is not China.

The argument that American investment will democratize China has itself been wildly oversold. Beijing is doing everything in its power to dampen the impact of private investment: placing stringent control on the Internet (all users must register with the Public Security Bureau), and most recently declaring that it will insert "party cells" into every private business that operates in China.

But regardless of how one feels about permanent normalized trade with China, there is simply no case to be made that investment would democratize Cuba.

Cuba has undertaken none of the market reforms that China has in recent years; there is no private property, and there are no entrepreneurs with whom to do business. The Fidel Castro regime maintains power by controlling every single aspect of Cuban life: access to food, access to education, access to health care, access to work.

This permits Castro to stifle any and all dissent. Any Cuban daring to say the wrong thing, by Castro's standards, loses his or her job. Anyone refusing to spy on a neighbor is denied a university education. Anyone daring to organize an opposition group goes to jail.

American investment cannot and will not change any of this. It cannot empower individual Cubans, or give them independence from the regime, because foreign investors in Cuba cannot do business with private citizens. They can do business only with Fidel Castro.

It is illegal in Cuba for anyone except the regime to employ workers. That means that foreign investors cannot hire or pay workers directly. They must go to the Cuban government employment agency, which picks the workers. The investors then pay Castro in hard currency for the workers, and Castro pays the workers in worthless pesos.

Here is a real-life example: Sherritt International of Canada, the largest foreign investor in Cuba, operates a nickel mine in Moa Bay (a mine, incidentally, which Cuba stole from an American company). Roughly 1,500 Cubans work there as virtual slave laborers. Sherritt pays Castro approximately $10,000 a year for each of these Cuban workers. Castro gives the workers about $18 a month in pesos, then pockets the difference.

The net result is a subsidy of nearly $15 million in hard currency each year that Castro then uses to pay for the security apparatus that keeps the Cubans enslaved.

Those who advocate lifting the embargo speak in broad terms about using investment to promote democracy in Cuba. But I challenge them to explain exactly how, under this system, investment can do anything to help the Cuban people.

The anti-embargo crowd should drop its rhetoric about promoting democracy and be honest: the one reason for their push to lift sanctions on Cuba is to pander to well-intentioned American farmers, who have been misled by the agribusiness giants into believing that going into business with a bankrupt Communist island is a solution to the farm crisis in America.

Whoever has convinced farmers that their salvation lies in trade with Cuba has sold them a bill of goods. Cuba is desperately poor, barely able to feed its own people, much less save the American farmer.

Castro wants the American embargo lifted because he is desperate for hard currency. After the Soviet Union collapsed and Moscow's subsidies ended, Castro turned to European and Canadian investors to keep his Communist system afloat. Now he wants American investors to do the same. We must not allow that to happen.

Unfortunately, some in Washington are all too willing to give Castro what he wants. At the least they should stop pretending that they are doing this to promote Cuban democracy and American values.

Washington Times, 25 June 2000

Castro's Long Arms

Editorial

Awakened by machine gun-toting soldiers at 4 a.m., two Cuban doctors living in Zimbabwe were abducted earlier this month. Their harrowing, Kafkaesque experience vividly illustrates the terrifying reach of Fidel Castro's repressive apparatus. In the wake of Mr. Castro's aggressive public relations operation to get Elian Gonzalez returned to Cuba, this recent abduction demonstrates that the Cuban regime continues to favor brutal tactics to silence dissent and prevent defections.

One month after Leonel Cordova and Noris Peña arrived in Zimbabwe as part of a Cuban medical mission, they contacted the Canadian Embassy in order to seek asylum in that North American country. The Canadians then referred them to the U.N. High Commission for Refugees. On May 24, the day after their visit to the Canadian Embassy, the doctors dropped into the offices of the Daily News, Zimbabwe's only independent, daily newspaper, and gave an interview critical of the Castro regime. "We want to go to Canada and work there if possible," Mr. Cordova told the newspaper. "We were sent here under the policies of Fidel Castro so that he can appear to the world as a good man."

The two doctors would pay dearly for that interview, which was transmitted by Associated Press and Agence France-Presse news wires. On June 2, they were taken at gunpoint from their home by Zimbabwean soldiers, and taken to an immigration office, where their captors tried to force them to sign some papers and took their fingerprints. They were then taken to Johannesburg, South Africa, and almost forced onto a flight connecting to Cuba. While being taken on board, however, the doctors cried out that they didn't want to return to Cuba and threatened to kill someone if forced onboard. The pilots deemed the doctors a security threat and didn't allow them on the flight.

In the process, Mr. Cordova snuck a three-page account of the abduction to an Air France crew person, who subsequently sent it to U.N. officials in Geneva. The note documented the last trace of the their whereabouts.

"Please, we are very concerned about our lifes [sic] and the well being of our family," the letter reads. "The High Commissioner of the United Nations for Refugees was to be informed what happened and that we are traveling, kidnapped, to Cuba," it added. The word "KIDNAPPED" was written in large letters on the margin.

That note saved the doctors. The U.N. high commissioner asked to meet with the Cuban doctors. Authorities in Zimbabwe, a country which has close ties to Cuba, for days denied knowledge of their whereabouts, and the Cuban embassy in Zimbabwe refused to answer inquiries regarding the doctors. Finally, last week, after being missing for six days, they resurfaced in a prison in Zimbabwe. The United States has repeatedly called on Zimbabwe to free the doctors and said the African country appeared to be breaking the Geneva conventions and international law by continuing to hold them.

Havana has insisted that it had nothing to do with the abduction, but in the note, Mr. Cordova said that the Cuban ambassador, the Cuban consul and the chief of the Cuban medical mission were all at the airport the doctors were brought to in Zimbabwe, before they were forced onto the plane for Johannesburg.

"We have very strong reason to believe that they are justified in their fear of persecution if they went back to Cuba," said Kris Janowski, spokesman for the U.N. high commissioner . Mr. Castro has proven once again his willingness to use force to suppress dissent. Of late, he has posed as a defender of family values -- but Mr. Castro really hasn't changed at all.