Global Policy Forum

Washington - Determined to tighten sanctions against Cuba and keep international investors out of Cuba, the House Wednesday followed the Senate's lead and resoundingly passed the Helms-Burton bill. President Clinton, who withdrew past objections to the tough sanctions bill after Cuba shot down two U.S. civilian planes, says he will sign the bill into law. The bill will "send Cuba a powerful message that the United States will not tolerate further loss of American life," Clinton said in a statement. The House approved the bill 336-86; the Senate vote was 74-22.

The bill targets companies doing business in Cuba in an attempt to block crucial international investment sought by the Cuban government. It allows Americans to sue companies that profit from property the Cuban government has confiscated during the past 35 years, a stipulation many U.S. allies have opposed. Under the bill, any person who makes use of property confiscated from Americans by Fidel Castro's government can be denied entry into the United States.

Canada, Mexico, and other countries that do business with Cuba object to the U.S. effort to unilaterally obstruct their investment policies. But Cuban-American Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Florida, said the bill "will penalize those who have become Castro's new patron saints: the foreign investors who callously traffic in American confiscated property in Cuba to profit from the misery of the Cuban worker." By codifying all existing embargo orders against Cuba, the bill makes it impossible for Clinton or any future president to ease or rescind sanctions without an act of Congress.

The bill also urges the president to seek an international embargo against Cuba -- no other major economic power now observes an embargo -- and authorizes the president to aid the democratic movement inside Cuba. But Cuba says that it's not worried. "The main victim of this law will be the United States itself," said Paul Taladrid, Cuba's deputy minister for foreign investment, "because it will have to face the opposition of the rest of the world, or its closest allies."

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