Panel Urges Closer Ties to Promote Cuban Democracy

A private panel proposed a major change in American policy toward Cuba, arguing on Thursday that opening communications, travel and person-to-person contacts with the island are the best ways to promote democracy there.

“Expanding Cuba’s access to information and ideas is the best way to foster political opening in that country,” said a report by the committee, organized by Inter-American Dialogue, a private pro-democracy group. “Far more than isolation, this kind of exposure is likely to bring change to Cuba.”

But the panel, headed by former Atty. Gen. Elliot Richardson, said the United States should maintain its three-decade economic embargo against the island and ease the blockade only in response to real political and economic reforms there. “A unilateral lifting of U.S. economic sanctions would imprudently give away many of the pressures . . . the international community has available to influence the Cuban government to change,” it said.

The panel also included former Argentine President Raul Alfonsin, former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt and McGeorge Bundy, who served as national security adviser to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

American policy toward Cuba, one of the last Communist-ruled nations, now centers on keeping Fidel Castro’s regime cut off from the United States with an almost-total ban on trade and tight restrictions on telephone, mail and travel connections. The Bush Administration has argued that maintaining Cuba’s isolation helps to weaken the Castro regime.

The panel’s report noted that Bush has argued that increased trade with China can promote poitical and economic opening in that country, but the President has not applied the same lesson to Cuba.

Nevertheless, the panel decided that a step-by-step approach to Havana was more realistic, beginning with more open communications and offering the possibility of trade if Cuba begins to reform.

“Some members would have preferred lifting the embargo, but politics is the art of the possible,” said Peter Hakim, the panel’s executive director. “It’s remarkable that the Administration is preventing telephone and fax communication with Cuba, when those have been critical tools for democratic movements from Panama to China.”

One reason for the cautious approach, he acknowledged, is the political clout of Cuban-Americans, who generally oppose any hint of an opening toward Castro.

The panel recommended reopening regular mail, telephone and air travel connections with Cuba.