New Policy on Cuba Will Aim to Aid All but Castro

President Clinton, acting in the wake of Pope John Paul II’s recent visit to Cuba, is expected to announce a new package of measures today aimed at improving conditions for individual Cubans while eroding support for Fidel Castro, the country’s longtime Communist leader.

According to a senior Clinton administration official, the measures will streamline procedures for sending medical supplies to Cuba, authorize direct humanitarian flights from the United States to the island and legalize limited remittances from Cuban Americans to relatives in Cuba.

“The idea is to help the people but hurt Castro,” summed up the official. “We have to prepare for the post-Castro era.”

By working through nongovernmental relief organizations--including those operated by the Roman Catholic Church--in implementing some of the measures, the administration hopes to strengthen institutions that are outside Castro’s immediate grasp. In the process, it hopes to foster an environment for opposition political movements, added the official, who asked not to be identified.

The steps represent a significant reversal of U.S. efforts in recent years to topple Castro by isolating Cuba from the world community, and they could face some resistance on Capitol Hill.

Rep. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), a Cuban American, labeled the measures “outrageous.”

“It will reward the Castro regime, despite its continued repression of civil and human rights in Cuba, by providing Castro with desperately needed hard currency,” Menendez said.

Marc Thiessen, spokesman for Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), criticized the president’s timing--claiming the measures could jeopardize efforts to build bipartisan support in Congress for bills containing similar action.

“What they are planning is a major mistake,” he said. “They are moving ahead unilaterally, and that seriously, seriously complicates efforts to build support for what we are doing. If the aim is to ease humanitarian suffering for the Cuban people, this is not the way to do it.”

Helms coauthored the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which tightened the decades-old embargo of Cuba. Thiessen and others questioned the legality of the president acting by executive order to overturn provisions that they insist are covered by the act.

Others, however, applauded the package.

“The president is right to take a step forward to help the Cuban people,” said Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), one of the most respected voices on the House’s International Relations Committee. “Instead of a policy of isolation, the United States should engage the Cuban people and foster an active civil society to help pave the way for a future peaceful transition to democracy.”

While administration officials said details of the measures are still being worked out, Clinton is expected to announce four specific steps that will:

* End the intentionally cumbersome procedures for authorizing shipments of medical supplies to Cuba by simplifying paperwork. Sales of medicine to Cuba were first authorized by Congress in 1992.

* Legalize the remittance of as much as $1,200 a year for each family from Cuban Americans in the United States to relatives in Cuba. While legal remittances were suspended in 1994, many Cuban Americans have continued to send money illegally. Administration officials claim that as much as two-thirds of this money is siphoned off in bribes by corrupt Cuban officials before it reaches the intended family. They also argue that alternative sources of money, if regularized, would help create income that is independent of the Cuban state and thus indirectly support alternative forms of leadership.

* Resume humanitarian charter flights of cargo and people to Cuba directly from the United States. For the most part, these flights were suspended in 1996 with the passage of the Helms-Burton Act, which requires such aid from the U.S. to depart for Cuba from a third country. Licenses for such humanitarian flights also will be distributed more easily.

* Urge Congress to join in a bipartisan search for ways to ease restrictions on food shipments to Cuba imposed in 1992.

According to senior administration officials, the initiative grew out of a meeting among Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and National Security Advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger before the papal visit to Cuba in January. At that meeting, Clinton asked his two senior foreign affairs specialists “to keep their eyes open for what happens” during the trip and later asked them to formulate possible policy recommendations.

Albright last month traveled to Florida to consult with the politically potent Cuban American community there, both to test the waters for such an initiative and to better assess the feasibility of using relief groups linked to the Catholic Church to help implement it.

Administration officials see the Catholic Church as an ideal vehicle for building an alternative source of power in the country.

“It has 4 million members, access to the population and noncensored sermons,” said one official. “It can give people the chance to build their own space [outside of government control].”