BY HILDA CUZCO

U.S. president William Clinton said July 16 that Washington would allow legal action against foreign firms doing business in Cuba, but announced a six-month moratorium on actually filing such lawsuits. This action comes under Title III of the Helms-Burton law, due to take effect on August 1. The president's decision followed the State Department's announcement of the first punitive measures against a Canadian mining firm under another provision of the act. Governments in the European Union have announced retaliatory measures against the law.

The Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, introduced by Sen. Jesse Helms and Rep. Dan Burton a year ago, was signed by Clinton March 12 under the pretext that the Cuban air force had shot down two airplanes piloted by Cuban counterrevolutionaries who violated that nation's airspace.

The law has been explicitly designed to pressure foreign investors to pull out of Cuba. Title IV, which is already in effect, says that any company that commits further "trafficking" in confiscated property in Cuba after March 12, 1996, is subject to a U.S. travel ban. Under that provision, the State Department has announced that the director and other officers of Sherritt International Corp., a Toronto-based mining company, will be barred from entering the United States. Sherritt has been operating jointly with a Cuban state-owned mining company for the last two years at a nickel mine that was expropriated from a New Orleans company, Moa Bay, shortly after the triumph of the Cuban revolution in 1959.

Sherritt's director, Ian Delaney, has expressed his opposition to the Helms-Burton Act. Delaney told the Toronto Star last year that the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba is "the meanest and ugliest part of American foreign policy."

Title III of the law allows U.S. citizens and corporations to sue foreign companies in U.S. courts that "traffic" in property confiscated by the Cuban people in the 1960s. The total amount of these certified claims is $1.8 billion - not including interest. Thousands of Cuban immigrants who left the island after the revolution and are today U.S. citizens fall in the "uncertified" claimant category. Before the Helms-Burton Act, they could not pursue claims in U.S. courts to try to get back their properties. Now they can do so after a two-year wait.

During the visit of Mexico's president Ernesto Zedillo to Canada last June both governments announced their opposition to the law. At a joint session of the Canadian Parliament June 11, Zedillo said, "Mexico and Canada consider inadmissible every measure that, rather than promote liberty, obstructs freedom, that instead of dropping barriers, erects them to the detriment of international investment and business."

The Mexican company Grupo Domos, which bought half of the Cuban telephone company in 1994 for $750 million, has received a warning letter from Washington under the tightened U.S. embargo. ITT, a New York-based communications company, ran the Cuban phone system before the Cuban revolution.

European Union (EU) members meeting in Brussels July 15 agreed on several steps to be taken in retaliation to the Helms- Burton Act if Clinton did not suspend Title III. The measures include visa restrictions, an appeal to the World Trade Organization's dispute settlement body, and steps to neutralize the effects of the act outside the United States among others.

"The best way to get change in Cuba is not to clobber your allies," said Leon Brittan, EU vice president and trade commissioner. The EU nations, led by Spain, France and Italy, accounted for 45 percent of Cuba's total trade in 1994, mainly in food, tobacco, and minerals.

In an interview with MSNBC, a new cable and Internet news service, president Clinton acknowledged the possibility of problems with his European allies and competitors, but he added, "I must do what I think is in the national interest of the United States and what is likely to bring democracy to Cuba. We have to keep pushing until we get a democratic response in Cuba." The president will again review whether to implement Title III in January.

A White House statement exhorted its allies to `Join us now in the effort to confine Cuban communism to the trash bin of history where it belongs. Join us in bringing the kind of pressure to bear on Fidel Castro and on that system that will bring about market economics and democracy in Cuba.' "

Meanwhile, three Cuban athletes defected to the United States in early July. Joel Casamayor, 24, and Ramón Garbey, 25, Cuban Olympic boxers were considered favorites to win gold medals at this summer's Olympic Games in Atlanta. They split their training camp in Mexico to go to California.

In an interview with the New York Times, both complained that Cuban authorities failed to provide them with automobiles and houses. "My car was a Chinese-made bicycle," griped Casamayor, while Garbey said he was humiliated by missing practices because overcrowded buses would not stop at his corner. They claimed they had been pressured to join the Union of Young Communists, and lost privileges when they refused. While the two claim to be political refugees, Times reporter James Sterngold noted they "knew little about politics and cared less.... Each expressed a great interest in meeting American women" and in professional boxing careers.

Cuban baseball pitcher Rolando Arrojo also defected to the United States in Albany, Georgia. Arrojo, 32, was a member of the Cuban Olympic team that will participate in the Atlanta games. He told the U.S. press that he has left a wife and two children, and that his decision "was very hard, but I had to take it to make my dreams of freedom and play for the major leagues come true."

Speaking to the Cuban delegation that will compete Atlanta in a send off ceremony, Cuban president Fidel Castro said, "We should despise those who sell themselves for 12 coins, as they say those were the coins that Judas received for his betrayal."  
 
 
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