BY MARTÍN KOPPEL
"Cuba is not begging for charity," Cuban president Fidel Castro stated February 2. "Cuba does not ask for humanitarian aid. Cuba asks for the end of the blockade."

Castro, speaking on Cuban television, denounced a proposal endorsed by U.S. senator Jesse Helms to offer "humanitarian relief" to Cuba under onerous conditions while maintaining the U.S. economic embargo against that Latin American nation.

The proposal, called "Bill to Provide Assistance and Aid to Cuba," was initiated by the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), a right-wing group of businessmen long headed by Jorge Mas Canosa, who died last November. Helms has not yet introduced it in the Senate.

The plan calls for offering to send up to $100 million in food and medicine to Cuba through the Catholic Church hierarchy, American Red Cross, and other so-called nongovernmental organizations. It calls for the U.S. Congress being allowed to "monitor" the delivery of the aid in Cuba, preventing its distribution through state-run stores and channels.

In a January 29 statement Helms said the bill would "keep firmly in place" the almost four-decade-long economic embargo on Cuba. Helms and Sen. Daniel Burton are co-sponsors of the embargo-tightening Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, also known as the Helms-Burton law, which U.S. president William Clinton signed into law in 1996.

Meanwhile, Rep. Esteban Torres and Sen. Christopher Dodd have sponsored bills in the respective houses of Congress that would allow the sale of food and medicine. Helms opposes that measure. Liberal Democrat Dodd, however, voiced approval of the Helms-CANF proposal because it supposedly acknowledges that Cuba should get U.S. "aid." On the other hand, the three congresspeople who are Cuban-American - Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Lincoln Diaz-Balart, and Robert Menendez - opposed the Helms proposal, saying it might invite criticism of the U.S. embargo on Cuba. Speaking February 3, U.S. State Department spokesman James Foley commented favorably on the Helms plan and slandered the Cuban government.

In his February 2 televised interview, Cuban president Castro declared that Cuba would not accept "aid" from the U.S. government. "That would be like asking this country to get on its knees and lick the hand of those who are stabbing it with a knife. There could be nothing more cynically repugnant."

The Cuban leader also used his remarks to congratulate the Cuban people for their dignified, disciplined, and revolutionary response to the Pope's visit.

This conduct proved, Castro said, that "the people of Cuba have never failed the revolution."  
 
 
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