Cuba Sees Anti-Embargo "Snowball" Gathering in U.S.
September 12, 1999 - 0:0
HAVANA Growing dissatisfaction in the U.S. business community with Washington's economic embargo on Cuba has created a snowball effect that could roll right over supporters of the sanctions, Cuba's foreign minister said on Friday. Felipe Perez Roque, who is expected to meet some American business leaders in New York later this month, said Havana was being inundated daily with requests for meetings and information from the U.S. private sector.
"I can see a snowball growing over the defenders of the blockade. I believe it will pass right over them if they do not act with common sense," he told a news conference in Havana. Perez cited both recent U.S. business criticisms of the sanctions, and political opposition in the United States, as shown by a Senate vote to promote direct food and medicine sales to Cuba. He said there was a growing consensus in the United States "that this is an irrational, stupid policy which affects U.S. interests as well as being a criminal policy of trying to kill a neighboring people through with hunger and disease." Implemented soon after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the U.S. sanctions were intended to squeeze President Fidel Castro out of power, but have been one of the Caribbean island's biggest nationalist rallying points over the years.
Most other nations now oppose the embargo, which Cuba says has cost it more than $60 billion in the last four decades. Perez, a 34-year-old former close Castro aide, said the sanctions issue showed how the U.S. government and people were hostage to "a small mafia" of hardline Cuban exiles in Miami. Media reports that the U.S. was considering sanctioning three European companies for possible infringement of its controversial Helms-Burton legislation showed how far out of line Washington was internationally, he added.
The reported investigations into Spain's Sol Melia, France's club Med, and Germany's LTU over their interests in Cuba's tourism sector were a "stupid aggression" and "flagrant violation" of world trade norms. He said the reports showed "the shipwreck" of an accord last year between the United States and the European Union, in which Washington undertook to obtain from Congress waivers of the Helms-Burton clauses threatening to penalize foreigners investing in former American property in Cuba. In his news conference, held ahead of a trip to Spain and Portugal next week, Perez also summarized a ministry report on Cuba's foreign relations due out next week.
He said its main conclusion was that the United States had been unable to isolate Cuba. "The policy of isolating Cuba, trying to cut its links with the world, discrediting Cuba, pressuring those who have ties with Cuba, has, from a strategic point of view, failed," he said. (AP)
"I can see a snowball growing over the defenders of the blockade. I believe it will pass right over them if they do not act with common sense," he told a news conference in Havana. Perez cited both recent U.S. business criticisms of the sanctions, and political opposition in the United States, as shown by a Senate vote to promote direct food and medicine sales to Cuba. He said there was a growing consensus in the United States "that this is an irrational, stupid policy which affects U.S. interests as well as being a criminal policy of trying to kill a neighboring people through with hunger and disease." Implemented soon after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the U.S. sanctions were intended to squeeze President Fidel Castro out of power, but have been one of the Caribbean island's biggest nationalist rallying points over the years.
Most other nations now oppose the embargo, which Cuba says has cost it more than $60 billion in the last four decades. Perez, a 34-year-old former close Castro aide, said the sanctions issue showed how the U.S. government and people were hostage to "a small mafia" of hardline Cuban exiles in Miami. Media reports that the U.S. was considering sanctioning three European companies for possible infringement of its controversial Helms-Burton legislation showed how far out of line Washington was internationally, he added.
The reported investigations into Spain's Sol Melia, France's club Med, and Germany's LTU over their interests in Cuba's tourism sector were a "stupid aggression" and "flagrant violation" of world trade norms. He said the reports showed "the shipwreck" of an accord last year between the United States and the European Union, in which Washington undertook to obtain from Congress waivers of the Helms-Burton clauses threatening to penalize foreigners investing in former American property in Cuba. In his news conference, held ahead of a trip to Spain and Portugal next week, Perez also summarized a ministry report on Cuba's foreign relations due out next week.
He said its main conclusion was that the United States had been unable to isolate Cuba. "The policy of isolating Cuba, trying to cut its links with the world, discrediting Cuba, pressuring those who have ties with Cuba, has, from a strategic point of view, failed," he said. (AP)