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U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC
May 15,
2002
"I support improving the relations between Washington and
Havana because…this can help us in our fight." - Vladimiro Roca,
May 13th, 2002, eight days after being released from a Cuban prison
where he spent 5 years for publishing a pamphlet urging the Cuban
government to permit civil freedoms.
As the Administration re-examines U.S. policy toward Cuba, we
respectfully invite President Bush and Secretary of State Powell to
consider a series of proposed policies that will increase American
influence in Cuba and serve a variety of concrete American national
interests.
We are a bipartisan group of Members of Congress with diverse
backgrounds and political philosophies. We are unanimous in
our criticism of the Cuban government’s abysmal human rights record,
its refusal to allow free elections or the creation of opposition
political parties, and its failure to respect freedom of the press
and rule of law. It is our desire to see Cubans enjoy greater
political and economic freedom.
In our efforts, we heartily embrace the message of Pope John Paul
II, who began his visit to Cuba, in 1998 by urging:
“May Cuba, with all its magnificent potential, open itself to the
world, and the world open itself up to Cuba, so that this people,
which is working to make progress and which longs for concord and
peace, may look to the future with hope.”
American policy toward Cuba lacks support among the American
public, the Congress, the international community, and most
importantly, inside Cuba, among dissidents, clergy, and average
Cuban citizens. Moreover, the U.S. policy objective of a
peaceful transition to a stable, democratic form of government and
respect for human rights in Cuba has gone unmet. After four
decades, the U.S. embargo has failed to produce meaningful political
and economic reform in Cuba.
U.S. policy is also at odds with the values and long-term
strategies that the President and Secretary of State passionately
advocate when they promote engagement around the world.
Indeed, our nation’s engagement of communist China and North Korea –
countries that have significant human rights problems and that pose
serious threats to American security – undermines support for our
Cuba policy by making it appear inconsistent and unprincipled.
Cuba should not be an exception to our nation’s engagement
policy. Because Cuba is a neighbor and our nations share deep
historical ties and current interests, Cuba should be at the center
of our engagement policy, even as we press our human rights agenda
at every opportunity.
Current U.S. policy seeks to assist the Cuban people and to
promote a “rapid and peaceful” transition to democracy, yet many of
its elements work in the opposite direction.
The embargo and other instruments intended to promote Cuba’s
economic and political isolation have indeed cut Cuba off from the
benefits of trade with the United States, but Cuba is by no means
isolated – Havana maintains commercial and diplomatic relations with
scores of countries, including America’s closest allies. Where
American policy has succeeded, in isolating the Cuban and American
people from each other, it has severely limited American influence
at a critical moment in Cuban history.
Bereft of Soviet bloc aid and trade for a decade, Cuba is
experimenting with elements of markets and capitalism, such as small
enterprise, free-market sales of farm produce, foreign investment,
and state enterprise reform, to generate jobs and growth.
Cuba’s next generation will have to decide whether to expand
these reforms, and will have to face a range of other economic,
political, and diplomatic choices with important consequences for
Cubans and Americans alike. Rather than keep the Cuban people
at arm’s length under the pretense of being “tough” on Fidel Castro,
now is the time for America to engage to the maximum at all levels
of Cuban society.
There are two main arguments in opposition to engagement with
Cuba. We respectfully offer a differing view.
First, it is argued that engagement with Cuba is not warranted
because, unlike China, Cuba has not reformed its economy. This
ignores a series of significant reforms that have, despite their
limited scope, given hundreds of thousands of Cubans opportunities
to work in small enterprise or other market-based settings,
increasing their earnings and improving their families’
livelihoods. While our decision to engage China in 1972 was
based on a number of complex factors, it is important to note that
this occurred well before that country embarked on its economic
reform program.
Second, it is argued that engagement would “cast a lifeline” to
the Cuban government. Yet Cuba’s government, in power 43
years, is by no means on the brink of collapse – not even its
strongest political opponents in Cuba argue that this is the case,
in spite of its economic difficulties. Nor was the Cuban
government’s political stability threatened by the economic
catastrophe of 1992-1994. By basing policy on a flawed
assessment of the political situation inside Cuba, the United States
has closed off avenues of engagement that would benefit the Cuban
people and serve American interests.
In a spirit of bipartisanship and with every interest in joining
the Administration in a dialogue, we offer the following
recommendations to improve American policy toward Cuba. Where
legislative remedies are possible, the Cuba Working Group will seek
out appropriate vehicles for such action. Where policy
requires action by the Executive branch, the Cuba Working Group
advises that such action be taken and will support the President’s
efforts to undertake such action.
I. Repeal the travel ban
Freedom to travel is a basic right of Americans. As
Americans exercise that right they expose people abroad to our
ideas, values, and culture, constituting a major source of American
influence.
The free movement of people across borders was enshrined in the
Helsinki agreements that were the cornerstone of President Ford’s
policy toward Eastern Europe.
The Cuba travel ban is an unwarranted intrusion on the rights of
American citizens; it criminalizes normal and constructive activity
by American citizens, and it closes off a powerful source of
American influence in Cuba.
The current system, under which the Treasury Department licenses
limited categories of travel, is a wasteful bureaucratic exercise
that acts as a deterrent even for Americans such as educators,
humanitarian donors, and religions groups, whose activities could
qualify for a license. Contact between Americans and Cubans
should be promoted by allowing full freedom of travel for Americans,
not through a federal licensing process that requires citizens to
ask permission of their government to visit a neighboring
country.
Repeal of the travel ban will:
- Remove penalties against American citizens for normal travel
to Cuba;
- Increase the flow of ideas and American influence;
- Remove barriers to increased educational, professional,
medical, and other contacts with Cubans;
- Generate revenues that will expand Cuba's small private sector
(especially private restaurants, taxis, artisans, home rentals);
- Boost U.S. farm exports by creating an increased demand for
U.S. produced goods .
- End the draconian restriction that limits Cuban-Americans to
one family visit per year in cases of humanitarian need; and
- Free the full resources of the Treasury Department’s Office of
Foreign Assets Control for its important mission of finding and
disrupting the global terrorist financing network.
II. Allow normal, unsubsidized exports of agricultural
and medical products
U.S. law currently permits the sale of food and medicines to
Cuba. However, cumbersome U.S. administrative procedures and
restrictions complicate and impede such trade, which could be of
significant benefit to the American economy. Far from focusing
attention on Cuba's failed domestic policies, U.S. restrictions send
the signal that America wants to use economic deprivation as a tool
for political change. We recommend:
- Permitting the sale of medicines, medical products, and
medical devices, consistent with Congressional intent upon passage
of the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act;
- Allowing private financing of agricultural and medical
exports, so that private entities such as banks and corporations
can decide according to their own criteria whether to assume the
risk of financing these sales;
- Repealing the provision of the Cuban Democracy Act that bans
any ship that visits Cuba from calling on an American port for 180
days; and
- Ending the requirement that donors and vendors of medical
products monitor their use in Cuba, while leaving intact normal
U.S. export controls related to national security.
III. End restrictions on remittances
Cuban-Americans are limited in the amount of money they can send
to support their families in Cuba. This limit, $100 per month
per household, is an unwarranted government intrusion on private
acts of support and charity between family members.
Remittances make a crucial difference in the well being of many
thousands of Cuban families, and they enable many to acquire the
modest resources with which to start small enterprises.
Remittances free Cuban families from dependence on the government
and fuel the continued growth of a dollar economy, independent of
the state. We recommend full repeal of the limit on
remittances.
IV. Sunset Helms-Burton in March 2003
The Libertad Act of 1996, also known as “Helms-Burton,” was
enacted on the premise that by tightening the embargo, it would
disrupt the Cuban economy and topple the Cuban government.
Among the law’s provisions are:
- Severe limitations on the President's foreign policy
prerogatives. Helms-Burton codified the embargo, which had
previously been an executive order, into law. The President
lost the ability to modify the embargo in calibrated ways in
response to incremental reforms that could take place in
Cuba.
- Mechanisms to settle claims on expropriated property that, if
allowed to go into effect, would clog U.S. courts with lawsuits
involving properties that the Cuban government expropriated from
Cuban citizens, not Americans.
· A distorted
definition of democracy and a failure to acknowledge the possibility
of anything other than the total and instantaneous transformation of
the Cuban state. Eight specific conditions are established before
any transitional government can be recognized by the United States.
And even if the Cuban people open their political system and
hold a multiparty election with international observers, that
government will not be recognized if it includes Fidel or Raul
Castro.
We support passage of legislation to sunset Helms-Burton, in
March of 2003, seven years after enactment, to allow a debate on the
merits of reauthorization provisions of this law.
V. Repeal Section 211
Section 211 of the Fiscal 1999 Omnibus Appropriations Act (P.L.
105-277) prevents the United States from accepting payment for
trademark licenses that were used in connection with a business or
assets in Cuba that were confiscated unless the original owner of
the trademark has consented. The provision prohibits U.S. courts
from recognizing such trademarks without the consent of the original
owner.
Section 211 constituted an improper intervention in a private
trademark matter in favor of a foreign interest, the Bermuda-based
Bacardi Corporation. It breaches U.S. obligations to honor
Cuban trademarks under the Inter-American Convention on Trademarks
and was judged by the WTO to be in violation of U.S. obligations to
protect intellectual property under the TRIPS Agreement. As a
result, it frees Cuba of its legal obligation to honor the more than
5,000 U.S.-owned trademarks registered in Cuba. Section 211
places American product trademarks at risk, violates our
international obligations, and undermines U.S. credibility in
defending intellectual property rights. The law places U.S.
owned intellectional property in jeopardy in Cuba, and creates a
risk of retaliation by the E.U. Section 211 has potentially
costly consequences for U.S. economic and commercial interests with
no meaningful benefit. We will seek the repeal of Section 211
and will oppose any amendment to Section 211 that extends its
treaty-breaching provisions to other countries besides Cuba.
VI. TV/Radio Marti
The U.S. government has spent over $400 million in taxpayer money
on radio and television broadcasts directed at Cuban citizens.
These broadcasts are meant to provide news and information to the
Cuban people that they otherwise could not acquire through the
controlled media of the Cuban state. In principle, this is a
worthy effort but in practice its record has been mixed. Radio
Marti’s audience has declined to five percent of the total
population, according to the latest survey by the U.S. government’s
Broadcasting Board of Governors, and serious questions exist about
the quality of its broadcasts and the administration of the
station.
TV Marti goes on the air at 3:30 a.m. and signs off at 8:00 a.m.
every day. It operates when nobody watches because international
broadcast rules require that the U.S. not interfere with Cuban
broadcast transmissions. To ensure that not even Cuban insomniacs
tune in, the Cuban government jams TV Marti. Consequently, TV
Marti reaches no audience in Cuba and is utterly without
purpose.
We recommend:
- Termination of TV Marti, which will save about $10 million
annually, until technology is developed and implemented to
overcome the Cuban government’s jamming.
- Comprehensive efforts to improve Radio Marti through financial
audits, rigorous independent assessments of audience reaction and
program quality, and an examination of the impact of moving
Radio Marti from Washington to Miami.
VII. Scholarships
In place of the failed communication effort of TV Marti, the
United States should promote educational programs with a proven
track record that will achieve real communication between Americans
and Cubans. We recommend that the funds saved from the
termination of TV Marti should be used to support educational
exchange programs with a proven track record, such as Fulbright
scholarships, that will promote real communication among thousands
of Americans and Cubans. Much like our exchange programs with
Vietnam, these programs must be designed to ensure that the Cuban
government has no role in selecting the participants.
VIII. Expand security cooperation
Cuba and the United States share some common hemispheric security
and environmental protection interests. Where once Cuba may
have posed a military challenge to the United States, we note that
the Cold War is over. Today the most serious possible security
threat from Cuba is that of an uncontrolled migration in the Florida
straits that could result from economic disaster or a political
crisis on the island. Cuba's current military capabilities
were described as "residual" and "defensive" by the Pentagon in 1998
in a Defense Intelligence Agency report that - contrary to recent
statements of Undersecretary of State John Bolton - represented
the comprehensive assessment of the entire U.S. intelligence
community.
Regarding Mr. Bolton's charge that Cuba may be involved in the
production of biological weapons, we note that he presented no
evidence to the American people or Congress. In fact, the
Administration omitted Cuba from a list of potential biological
weapons producers just last November. Contradicting Mr.
Bolton's statement that Cuba has "at least a limited offensive
biological warfare research and development effort," Secretary of
State Powell said that Cuba is not conducting such research, but
that it has the ability to do so. "We do believe that Cuba has
a biological offensive research capability," Secretary Powell
said. "We didn't say it actually had such weapons but it has
the capacity and capability to conduct such research and this is not
a new statement."
Despite such concerns, Cuba and the United States already
cooperate in a limited fashion in controlling migration and
combating drug trafficking. The United States has a compelling
interest in building on that cooperation to achieve results in other
areas of mutual interest.
Cuba has expressed a desire to negotiate a broad security agenda
with the United States. We urge the Administration to enter
such a discussion to determine whether additional agreements can be
reached to serve U.S. interests. The discussion should include
matters of international crime, drug smuggling, and terrorism; in
particular we believe it would be constructive to move beyond the
limited but productive case-by-case cooperation in
counternarcotics. We also urge the Administration to begin
discussions on environmental protection, including Coast Guard
contingency planning for environmental disasters. This is
particularly important as Cuba begins oil exploration off its
northwest coast.
IX. Certified Property Claims
Progress in economic and political relations eventually will
require the settlement of claims for expropriations of $1.2
billion in U.S. property by the Cuban government in 1959 and
1960. The forty-year old U.S. trade embargo was initiated
because of these expropriations. America’s major allies and
trading partners have reached property claims settlements with Cuba,
just as America has done with China, Vietnam, and Eastern European
countries. We do not recommend here the kind of claims
settlement that would be appropriate with Cuba. However, we
strongly urge the Administration to devote serious attention and
creative effort to the issue in order to obtain the compensation
American claimants deserve.
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