OVER SI million was report. edly raised at ther hich vpublicised dinner in Havana to celebrate the 30th anniversar of Cuba's elite Cohiba brand cigar.
But far more important for Fidel fact that as many as 200 top US business cadets achica intensuying threats of legal retribution from the State Department and accepted invitations to attend the dinner, making another high-profile breach in the American effort to isolate Cuba and starve it into submission.
The gesture comes at a crucial time for US President Clinton who is under pressure from the Republican-led Congress and many of his own virulently anticommunist Democrats to implement a new escalation in the trade embargo, first imposed in the carly ing nationalisation of US-owned inUnited Nations General Assembly nas cach ycar acciarco it opposttion to the US embargo.
The Helms-Burton Act, authorising private action through the US courts against forcika companic. doing business in Cuba, was passed into law in March of 1996 with Clinton's support.
The legislation gives the President the discretion to delay its full implementation for six months: but it was due to come into full force at the end of February, amid a storm of angry opposition from the USA's main trading partners and competitors. After 38 years, Castro is stil US public enemy number one!
The resistance to Helms-Burton has been led by the European Union, but also supported by the USA's partners in the North American Free Trade Area, Canada and Mexico.
A furious Canadian government, annoyed at being press-ganged into fighting the USA's battles, has threatened to open up the flood. gates of litigation by the implementation of US court judgements and allowing retaliatory lawsuits against US companies.
The EU has called for the World Trade Organisation to set up a dispute panel to rule on the legality of the US measures, with the nearcertainty that the Helms-Burton law (described by the Financial Times as "silly and indefensible") would be thrown out.
The US, recognising its weakness, has refused to co-operate with the wi pance, claiming toat 1s vendetta against Cuba is necessary for US national security!
The worry among top European business chiefs is that if the world's most powerful nation cocks a snook at the fledgling WTO, the entire structure set up out of the years of GATT negotiations could rapidly But at the same time, increasing sectors of Euroncan capital have been attracted towards investment turnaround in the country's economic fortunes in 1996, after years of deprivation as a result of the loss deals with the former USSR and Eastern Europe. Cuba's two-way trade plunged from $13.5 billion in 1989 to $3.3 billion in 1994. The loss of hard currency: coupled with the intensified ÜS blockade, brought dire shortages of medicines and medical supplies.
But from 1993, Cuba resorted to a number of economic changes which opened up the possibility of joint ventures, and in 1996 it declared trade zones. European and Canadian firms are not happy to surrender guaranteed profits from tourism and other ventures in order to assist slaught on Castro's regime.
Clinton's aim, reinforced by Helms-Burton, is to isolaic Cuba diplomatically, politically and eco nomically. Indeed Section 104 of Helms-Burton makes clear that the US is opposed to Cuba being allowed access to the International Monetary Fund or any other finanwith strict conditions attached to The US objective goes much fur. imposing a new regime favourable floats the idea of making certain grants and loans availabic to a post castro government to "train fournalists", fund "democratic political parties", fund "long-term advisors", and assist in "transforming" Cuba's armed forces to make them acceptable to the USA. Clinton's document is effectively a manifesto for the recolonisation of Cuba.
The obvious divisions that have opened up among the ranks of the world's capitalists offer short-term hope that Cuba can survive this But the cringing reluctance of ine brush and bo govcramches to confront their rival imperialists in Washineton underlines that the only long-term defence of the gains of the Cuban revolution hang on the solidarity and support of the working class internationally.
British trade unions should be demanding that Tony Blair, allegedly so close to Bill Clinton, step in and tell him to get his hands off the Cuban people, scrap Helms-Burton and lift the 35-year old blockade.