Published, Wednesday, May 16, 2001, in the Miami Herald

Senators will propose $100 million in assistance to Cuban dissidents

BY FRANK DAVIES

WASHINGTON -- Trying to redirect the political debate on Cuba, two powerful U.S. senators will unveil a bill today designed to send $100 million in U.S. aid over the next four years to opposition groups and individuals inside Cuba.

Sens. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., will sponsor the ``Cuban Solidarity Act,'' which would authorize the Bush administration to provide communications equipment such as telephones and faxes, along with food and cash, to nongovernmental groups on the island.

The bill will be introduced on Capitol Hill by Helms, Lieberman and Jorge Mas, president of the Cuban American National Foundation. Mas said earlier this year that he wanted to increase pressure on the Cuban government by getting direct aid to dissidents and other activists.

Such direct assistance has had the rhetorical support of past U.S. presidents, but has never been systematically attempted. Officials in the Bush administration could not be reached for comment late Tuesday for their reaction.

``This is taking the struggle inside Cuba. This is legislation to foment and strengthen the civil society in Cuba,'' said Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, who said the organization has always supported the infusion of cash to nongovernment groups on the island.

``The foundation has never been about total economic isolation. The foundation has been about isolation of the government of Cuba,'' he said. ``This support is to go to those who are trying to open a space for civil debate inside Cuba. The foundation doesn't want to strangle Cuba, we want to strangle the Cuban government.''

Jose Cárdenas, director of the foundation's Washington office, said ``it will be a tremendous challenge'' to find ways to reach out to Cuba's people without the aid ending up in the hands of the Castro government.

``But this will be a powerful signal, even if the regime seizes much of it, or blocks it, that we are trying to help the Cuban people,'' Cárdenas said.

Anti-embargo activists welcomed the seeming change in attitude, while cautioning that the United States should not be involved in subsidizing the internal opposition in Cuba.

``I am all in favor of any help that we can give to the dissidents, but that help shouldn't come from the U.S. government,'' said Marcelino Miyares, secretary general for the Cuban Committee for Democracy, an anti-embargo lobby.

``I believe the U.S. government should get its hands off Cuba so we Cubans can resolve our problems,'' Miyares said. ``I oppose any actions of the U.S. government intervening in our internal affairs.''

The legislation will have the backing of two Senate leaders on foreign policy. Helms, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, is coauthor of the Helms-Burton Act of 1996 that tightened the embargo on Cuba. Lieberman, who was Al Gore's running mate, is a leading moderate and longtime friend of the Cuban American National Foundation.

Backers of the bill compare their effort to how the Reagan administration funneled aid to labor unions and other groups inside Poland during the rise of ``Solidarity'' in the 1980s.

The foundations two-page summary of the bills provisions even includes a ``Solidarity'' logo that uses the same lettering and style of the Polish opposition group of the '80s.

Critics point out that Poland was not as isolated as Cuba and had thriving opposition groups.

One senator who has opposed the embargo on Cuba, Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., will oppose the Helms-Lieberman legislation, according to a Dodd spokesman. Dodd is planning to criticize the measure as misguided and a waste of money.

According to the bill, the assistance may include food, medicine, office supplies, educational materials, phones and fax machines.

Recipients could include political prisoners and family members, persecuted dissidents, workers rights activists and independent economists and journalists.

The legislation will also mandate the government to increase the availability of U.S.-funded Radio and TV Marti programming to Cuba. Those broadcasts now reach few Cubans, according to several surveys.

The bill also would instruct Attorney General John Ashcroft to investigate high-level Cuban government involvement in the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot down. The foundation has long sought the indictment of Castro and other Cuban officials for their role in that incident.

Herald staff writer Elaine de Valle contributed to this report.