Published Wednesday, September 20, 2000, in theMiami Herald

Clashes erupt at hearings on ending Cuba embargo

`Castro's government does not present an intelligent nor ethical investment environment.'

-- REP. LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART, Miami Republican

BY ANA RADELAT
Special to The Herald 

WASHINGTON -- A government hearing on the economic impact of ending the 38-year-old U.S. embargo of Cuba drew repeated clashes Tuesday, with opponents saying the policy damages both the Cuban and U.S. economies, and supporters declaring Cuba would make a poor investment partner.

The two-day hearings before the International Trade Commission, an independent, nonpartisan federal agency, are part of a study the agency is preparing at the request of the House Ways and Means Committee on the sanctions.
A DIPLOMAT

Fernando Remírez, Cuba's highest ranking diplomat in the United States, claimed the embargo has ``a dramatic impact on the living standards of the Cuban people'' that results in shortages of food and medicine.

Remírez contended the embargo has caused $300 billion in economic damages and monetary compensation for human suffering.

Cuba rarely testifies at U.S. government hearings, and Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Díaz-Balart, Republican members of Congress from Miami, complained that Remírez had been invited to speak.

``Officials of this regime customarily manipulate the facts and, history has shown, systematically violate the rule of law by acting against internationally legal standards,'' Ros-Lehtinen said.
CASTRO

Díaz-Balart maintained that ``Castro's government does not present an intelligent nor ethical investment environment.''

Dennis Hays, the executive vice president of the Cuban American National Foundation, said the high-profile hearing on the embargo served as a ``distraction'' from Cuba's human rights record.

The ITC hearings were requested by the head of the Ways and Means panel, Rep. Bill Archer, R-Texas, at the behest of Rep. Charlie Rangel of New York, the senior Democrat on the powerful panel and a longtime critic of U.S. sanctions against Cuba.

``The logic that convinced America, Congress and the administration that we need to trade with China and Vietnam applies also to Cuba,'' Rangel said. The Senate voted Tuesday to give China preferential trading status.

THE CONTROVERSY

Held as Congress debates easing restrictions on the sale of food and medicine to Cuba, the hearings are aimed at helping the ITC compile a report, to be submitted to Congress in February, on the embargo's economic impact on U.S. businesses and Cuba's foreign investors and people.

But the controversy Cuba stirs forced ITC commissioners to repeatedly ask witnesses to limit themselves to economic, not political, discussions of the embargo.

``Most of your answers are directed at whether sanctions serve a political purpose, which is an interesting question. But that's not what we're charged with,'' Commissioner Jennifer Hillman said.

Trading with Cuba was portrayed as the best way to undermine Fidel Castro's government while helping U.S. businesses and lifting living standards of ordinary Cubans.

But embargo supporters maintained that Cuba's unpredictable regulatory system and lack of cash would make it an poor trading partner. They also said that lifting sanctions would only shore up Castro's government and increase repression on the island.

``Unilateral lifting of the embargo now will condemn the Cuban people to a longer dictatorship and will prevent a rapid transformation of Cuba into a free and democratic system,'' said Jaime Suchlicki of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami.
LARGEST MARKET

Richard Bell of the USA Rice Federation said Cuba has imported $3.1 billion worth of rice since 1962 and could once again become the largest market for U.S. rice if the embargo were lifted.

``The only real winners as a result of our Cuban trade sanctions are the suppliers of lower quality rice elsewhere in the world,'' Bell said. ``The big losers are the U.S. rice industry and the Cuban consumer.''

Copyright 2000 the Miami Herald.
Republished here with the permission of the Miami Herald. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the written approval of The Miami Herald.