As announced, the agreement reached by the legislators ends all unilateral U.S. food and medicine embargoes currently in effect--against Cuba, Iran, Libya, Sudan, and North Korea--and prohibits the president from using such sanctions in the future without obtaining Congressional authorization.

Cuba alone, however, would be prohibited from using U.S. government or commercial credit to purchase food and medicine. It would either have to pay in cash or secure a loan from a bank in another country, probably at high interest rates. Sales of Cuban goods to the United States would continue to be banned.

The measure would also codify into law, at least for the next year, existing regulations--currently enforced by executive order--that restrict travel to Cuba by U.S. residents. Under these regulations, travel is authorized for U.S. residents who are granted a license by the U.S. Treasury Department or are invited by a non-U.S. group that pays all expenses.

The Cuba provision is one of the items tacked onto a $80 billion agriculture spending bill for the coming year. A final vote in the House and Senate still has to take place.

U.S. president William Clinton objected in particular to the measure's effect on the executive branch's power to make and apply policy. "It certainly restricts , I think, in a completely unwarranted way, the ability of the United States to make travel decisions on policy that I do not believe should be made, written in law, in stone by the Congress."

Rep. George Nethercutt, a Republican from Washington State who for the third year in a row has sponsored a bill to supposedly ease U.S. sanctions on food and medicine to Cuba, commented that the agreement "doesn't meet the needs of everybody, it's not perfection, but it's an opening."

Some of the most vocal supporters of the U.S. embargo expressed satisfaction with the negotiated bill. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Republican of Florida, called it "a tremendous victory."

In an October 5 statement reiterating the Cuban government's position, the foreign ministry in Havana denounced "a supposed agreement in the U.S. Congress permitting the sale of medicines and foodstuffs to Cuba, which is being presented as a substantial change in the blockade when in reality it is not." It noted, "If this maneuver comes to fruition, the U.S. blockade of Cuba would remain intact."

The statement emphasized, "For Cuba, the real solution is the normalization of relations between the two countries and the lifting of the genocidal blockade unilaterally imposed against Cuba."

The foreign ministry added, "While reiterating its disposition to maintain normal trade relations with U.S. companies, the Cuban government wishes it to be clearly understood that if this bill is passed under these discriminatory and humiliating conditions, Cuba will not undertake any commercial transaction with the United States."  
 
Four decades of U.S. economic war
Washington has carried out a bipartisan policy of aggression against Cuba since working people there, under the leadership of the July 26 Movement and the Rebel Army commanded by Fidel Castro, overthrew the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship in January 1959. As the revolutionary leadership mobilized workers and farmers to carry out far-reaching social measures, including a sweeping land reform in 1959 and the nationalization of key industries in 1960, and refused to back down before Washington's ultimatums, the U.S. rulers launched a campaign of counterrevolutionary terror against the Cuban people.

After Cuban working people defeated the U.S.-organized mercenaries at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961 and forced Washington to back off its invasion plans during the October 1962 "missile" crisis, the U.S. rulers embarked on a policy of economic, diplomatic, and political warfare with the aim of overthrowing the Cuban revolution.

The U.S. trade embargo, enacted under the Kennedy administration in the early 1960s, was tightened in 1992 under the misnamed Cuban Democracy Act, known as the Torricelli law, which made it illegal for foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies to trade with Cuba. The law also closed U.S. ports to ships that have made a port of call to Cuba within the previous six months, and authorized the president to apply sanctions against any government that provides aid to Cuba.

In 1996, Clinton signed into law the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act, also known as the Helm-Burton law. It codified into law all previous executive orders tightening the embargo. It also allowed Cuban-American and other U.S. businessmen whose property on the island was expropriated to sue companies abroad that invest in those properties.