Senate Nears OK of Stricter Cuba Sanctions

Republican sponsors of legislation to tighten economic sanctions against Cuba reached a compromise with Democratic opponents Wednesday, guaranteeing Senate passage in exchange for elimination of its most controversial section.

The compromise came as Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), chief author of the Cuba bill, agreed to drop a provision intended to hamstring Cuban President Fidel Castro’s campaign to attract foreign investment. The agreement ended a Democratic filibuster.

The Senate then voted, 98 to 0, to limit debate, a procedural step that foreshadowed final passage, although managers of the legislation were uncertain when that will occur.

About the same time, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns announced that Castro will be given a visa allowing him to attend 50th anniversary ceremonies at the United Nations.

Burns said that Castro will be allowed to visit only between Oct. 21 and Oct. 25 and that he will be required to stay within a 25-mile radius of Columbus Circle in New York City. It will be only Castro’s second visit to the United States since he took power in 1959.

The “host country” treaty between the United States and the United Nations requires Washington to allow foreign officials to attend U.N. sessions except under very unusual circumstances.

Final Senate action on the sanctions bill will send the measure to a conference with the House, which last month passed a far tougher version of the bill much closer to the language that Helms and his supporters originally wanted.

Although Helms agreed to the compromise, he joined Sens. Bob Dole of Kansas and Phil Gramm of Texas, both Republican presidential hopefuls, in expressing hope that the Senate-House conference committee will accept the House version.

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But if that happens, Senate Democrats could resume the filibuster, which blocked action on the bill until Helms agreed to change it. Tuesday, the Senate had voted, 59 to 36, largely along party lines, to end the filibuster--but that was one vote short of the 60 required. Two Republicans joined 34 Democrats in voting to continue the nonstop talkathon, and nine Democrats joined 50 Republicans in voting to end it.

The Senate bill would tighten an existing ban on imports of Cuban sugar and molasses, order the Administration to ask the U.N. Security Council to impose a worldwide economic embargo, and cut U.S. economic aid to Russia by the $200 million or so a year that Moscow spends to rent intelligence facilities on the island.

The bill also would require the Administration to develop contingency plans to assist Cuba in a transition to democracy in the event of Castro’s resignation, death or overthrow.

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Most of the provisions have largely symbolic importance. For instance, President Clinton is authorized to waive the aid cut for Russia if he certifies that it would be in the national interest to do so. And the Security Council repeatedly has rejected U.S. efforts to slap international sanctions on Cuba and seems no more ready to take the step now than before.

In the version of the bill that passed the House last month by a vote of 294 to 130, the most significant provision would give Cuban exiles who lost property to government expropriation the authority to file lawsuits in U.S. courts against foreign businesses that acquired that property.

If enacted, that provision would make it virtually impossible for the Cuban government to attract foreign investment, because it could not guarantee legal title to any property that it might want to sell. The measure would also prohibit people who traffic in confiscated Cuban property from obtaining visas to enter the United States.

It was that section that Helms abandoned to break the filibuster.

Dole said that the section’s “chilling effect on investment . . . worries Fidel Castro the most.” He blamed a “White House blitz” for the Democratic opposition that forced Helms to compromise.