Three conditions apply to lifting of embargo on Cuba

Three conditions apply to lifting of embargo on Cuba

Published: January 9 2009 02:00 | Last updated: January 9 2009 02:00

From Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart.

Sir, Your editorial "Prepare the ground for post-Castro era" (December
31) was uncharacteristically ill-informed. As a representative in the US
Congress of hundreds of thousands of Cuban-Americans and the author of
the codification into US law in 1996 of the embargo on the Cuban
dictatorship, please allow me to offer the following information.

The reason we maintain a trade and tourism embargo on the Cuban
dictatorship (a regime that has kept itself in power through terror and
repression for 50 years) is, first, because it is in the national
interest of the US for there to be a democratic transition in Cuba, as
it obviously is in the interest of the long-suffering people of Cuba;
second, because, as in the democratic transitions that occurred in Spain
or Portugal or Greece, or in those that took place in South Africa or
Chile or the Dominican Republic, it is absolutely critical that there be
some form of external pressure for a democratic transition to take place
in Cuba once the dictator is no longer on the scene (and Fidel Castro,
while very ill, is still the ultimate power in totalitarian Cuba). At
the time of the disappearance from the scene of the Cuban dictator, it
will be absolutely critical for the US embargo to be in place as it is
today, with its lifting being conditional, as it is by law, on three
fundamental developments in Cuba.

Number one, the liberation of all political prisoners. Number two, the
legalisation of all political parties, independent labour unions and the
independent press. And number three, the scheduling of free,
internationally supervised elections.

At the time of the disappearance of the dictator in Cuba, the US
embargo, with its lifting being conditional upon those three
developments, as it is by law, will constitute critical leverage for the
Cuban people to achieve those three conditions. In other words, for them
to achieve their freedom.

With regard to your allegation that US sanctions have "failed", I would
ask you to remember what the Cuban dictatorship used to do when it
received $5bn or $6n annually from the Soviet Union, an amount similar
to what it would begin receiving each year from US tourism alone if
sanctions were lifted.

I would ask you to remember Grenada, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Angola,
Eritrea and so on. This is not the time to give the Cuban dictatorship
countless billions of dollars unilaterally, while Cuba's prisons remain
full of heroic political prisoners and while the regime remains a state
sponsor of international terrorism.

Lincoln Diaz-Balart,
Member of the US Congress, Florida

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