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Large-scale gatherings of chiefs of state and government are known to generate their own intoxicating environment in which trivial events involving participants are seen as harbingers of great breakthroughs in bridging fundamental policy differences. And this was true of the largest gathering ever, the recent United Nations Millenium Summit, where more than 180 so-called world leaders—it’s hard to believe that chiefs of state such as Ionatana Ionatana, who rules over the 10,000 people of Tuvalu, a cluster of tiny islands 2,100 miles north of Australia, can qualify as “world leaders”—got together for a string of breakfasts, lunches, cocktail parties and dinners that left New York City caterers tired from their repeated trips to the bank.
Of course, not all was partying. Serious business was transacted. Each “world leader” had exactly five minutes to address his peers on how to solve all global problems (for Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, for example, pardoning his country’s foreign debt would do it).
Then, of course, there was the handshake between Bill Clinton and Fidel Castro, one of the “delightful moments” of the Millennium Summit according to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. “For a U.S. president and a Cuban president to shake hands for the first time in over 40 years—I think it is a major symbolic achievement,” he added in a burst of nonsensical sentimentalism.
The Clinton-Castro handshake occurred after they attended a lunch given by Annan for the heads of state and government taking part in the Summit, when they found themselves together as they headed for a U.N. conference room for a group photograph. While Castro said it was a gesture of “dignity and courtesy,” he White House denied the encounter was of any significance.
“I hope that this a sign of things to come,” said Annan of the handshake, and this was music to the ears of lobbyists representing farm and business interests, many of them heavy contributors to Democratic campaigns, who expect to get in on the ground floor of Cuban investing if Clinton “normalizes” relations with the Cuban dictator.
No photographers were around to document this “major symbolic achievement,” but the New York Daily News, owned by Clinton contributor Mortimer Zuckeman, entered into the spirit of the occasion running on its front page a doctored picture in which Clinton and Castro appeared to be about to shake hands (the next day they responded to criticism by expressing their regret for the “illustration.”).
However, the outlook is growing cloudier for those who seek sanctions relief for Cuba. A drive by farm and business groups to alleviate the four-decade-old embargo on trade with the Castro regime by allowing food and medicine sales to Cuba could be derailed by congressional disagreements over how far to go and fears of affecting the presidential vote in Florida, where public opinion polls are showing a tight race between Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush. Cuban Americans are a potent political bloc in Florida and they are almost unanimous in their opposition to any change in the embargo.
While proponents of the change say that they remain confident of victory, there are jitters about the outcome. Representative Tom Ewing, an Illinois Republican, has said “I would not be surprised” if the proposal was quashed. The proposal will die unless lawmakers reach agreement before Congress adjourns in early October.
American farm and business groups say Cuba, 90 miles from Florida in the Caribbean, would be a natural market for U.S. goods and that, anyway, the embargo failed to isolate Cuba and now is a futile Cold War relic.
“The mood seems to be for change now,” said a spokesman for Representative George Nethercutt, a Washington state Republican and a leading sponsor of loosening food and medicine sanctions. But attempts to exempt these items from unilateral U.S. embargoes were thwarted at the last moment in 1998 and 1999 by hard-core opposition. House and Senate negotiators may not meet until this coming week, if then, to work on the $75 billion agriculture funding bill that includes the troublesome Cuba language that would allow the sales but ban any government or private U.S. financing of food exports to Havana.
Trade, however, is not all that plays a role in the politics of this proposed action. Human-rights advocates are concerned about Vladimiro Roca and thousands of other political prisoners wh0 would be still rotting in the dictatorship’s dungeons while the U.S. is happily developing a new market for its products in Cuba. Roca, who is in solitary confinement for his nonviolent political opposition, symbolizes both the regime’s continued repression and Cuban contempt for Castro. Ending the isolation of the Cuban people has its merits, but if the U.S. has any moral conscience left after almost eight Clinton years it will demand fundamental human rights for Cubans before it lifts the embargo. Securing the release of Roca and all other political prisoners would be a good start, something that would really give meaning to a handshake between an American president and a Cuban dictator.
Claudio Campuzano (claudio-campuzano@hotmail.com) is U.S, correspondent for the Latin American newsweekly Tiempos del Mundo and editorial page editor of the New York daily Noticias del Mundo. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com