Clinton Gets Scolding by EU on Cuba Curbs

The European Union’s chief political executive lectured President Clinton in public Wednesday on the harm done to Europeans by the latest American sanctions on Cuba, but the president turned aside the complaints.

The scolding was the latest in a series of worldwide condemnations of a new law that would expose some foreign firms doing business in Cuba to lawsuits in American courts and would prevent their executives and families from entering the United States.

Reading a statement at a news conference, Jacques Santer, president of the European Union’s executive commission, told Clinton: “We do not believe it is justifiable or effective for one country to impose its tactics on others and to threaten . . . its friends by targeting its adversaries.

“If that is done, it is bound to lead to reactions it is in the interests of us both to avoid,” warned Santer, who is from Luxembourg.

Clinton acknowledged that the new law, which affects foreign firms doing business on property claimed by American citizens, raises the issue of “extraterritoriality”--the attempt of one country to extend its law to another.

“I’m very sensitive to the whole question of extraterritoriality,” the president said. “We’re reviewing that.”

But Clinton also said, “We think that . . . the persistent refusal of Cuba to move toward democracy or openness and the particular problems that causes for countries in our hemisphere and for the United States especially justified the passage of the bill, which I signed into law.”

Santer spoke after the annual conference between the United States and the European Union. He noted that the issue of the anti-Cuba act--authored by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.)--had aroused so much opposition that some outsiders had expected the 90-minute White House meeting to discuss little else. But this did not occur.

“This was not the Helms-Burton summit that some said it would be,” Santer said. “But we did raise our concerns . . . in no uncertain terms with our American colleagues.”

Santer then criticized the bill with a sharpness that appeared to surprise U.S. officials.

State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns told reporters Tuesday that he had seen a statement from the European Union “that they did not intend to hector the United States publicly on this issue during the U.S.-EU summit.”

Burns expressed delight at this, saying: “We believe that our ability to discuss this productively will be improved if we can have private discussions and not have public debates.”

At the news conference, Santer made it clear that the Europeans are also concerned about similar bills in Congress that would target foreign firms doing business with Iran and Libya.

That legislation would have a larger impact on Europe than the anti-Cuba law because European firms do far more business with those states.

“We are every bit as concerned about rogue states as the United States are,” Santer said. “European nations have fought terrorism at every opportunity and will continue to do so. But this is a different issue.”

In reply to a question, Clinton rejected the thesis that the anti-Cuba law is similar to the secondary boycott that Arab nations once imposed on all foreign firms doing business with Israel.

He said there was “quite a difference between the generalized Arab boycott of Israel . . . simply because Israel existed, and the Helms-Burton bill.”

The new law “provides the president some flexibility in its administration and . . . is directed against the only country in our hemisphere which is not a democracy,” Clinton said.

He also noted that the law “passed in the aftermath of Cuba’s flagrant shooting down of two . . . American airplanes in international airspace and killing innocent civilians, most of whom were American citizens.”