Legislation would OK food sales to Cuba for first time in 40 years

 BY ANA RADELAT
 Special to The Herald

 The Senate gave final congressional approval Wednesday to a $78 billion farm
 spending bill that modestly eases the trade embargo against Cuba, ending a
 bitter months-long standoff and making both winners and losers of all the
 combatants.

 The bill, approved 86-8, would allow the sale of food to Cuba for the first time in
 four decades, but is restricted because it bars the federal government or U.S.
 banks from financing the shipments.

 Florida Sens. Bob Graham, a Democrat, and Connie Mack, a Republican, both
 voted in favor of the bill, which President Clinton is expected to sign.

 Farm groups eager to trade with Cuba say the legislation is a start.

 ``Hopefully, it will be a step toward a broader opening,'' said Sen. Tim Hutchinson,
 an Arkansas Republican whose state's farmers hope to sell rice to Cuba.

 Sean Garcia, executive director of the Cuban Committee for Democracy, said,
 ``Everybody got a little bit of something. We have won some, and lost some.''

 Garcia said that the big win for the CCD, a 5,000-member exile group that
 supported easing food sanctions on Havana, is that ``for the first time proponents
 of the embargo have had their hold on the agenda irreparably broken.''

 But Garcia cites as losses the deal's restrictions on sales to Cuba and the
 ``immediate setback'' posed by a provision in the agreement that strips the
 president of his power to expand U.S. travel to Cuba.

 The restrictions on sales to Cuba and the travel freeze were hailed as big victories
 by Reps. Lincoln Díaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Miami Republicans.

 In fact, for Díaz-Balart the compromise bill represented ``the most significant
 victory since I've been in Congress.''

 Díaz-Balart said congressional fervor over making China a permanent preferential
 trade partner had created a free-trade ``tidal wave'' that threatened to sweep away
 the 40-year-old embargo -- and that was stopped. Moreover, Díaz-Balart was
 concerned that ``there would be a major Clinton initiative'' that would open up U.S.
 travel to Cuba.

 Under the new legislation, Cuban President Fidel Castro's government would be
 required to pay for U.S. agricultural products in cash or through financing by
 foreign banks -- no U.S. private or government financing could be used. Havana
 has denounced the conditions as ``discriminatory and humiliating.''

 But the agreement does not impose those restrictions on other nations affected
 by the deal -- North Korea, Libya, Sudan and Iran. To placate key farm state
 lawmakers who opposed the restrictions on Cuba, GOP leaders abandoned their
 insistence that sales to Iran carry the same restrictions as those to Cuba.

 When Clinton signs the bill into law, the biggest winner will be U.S. agribusiness.
 Unfettered by the restrictions that apply to Cuba, U.S. banks can be involved in
 food sales to North Korea, Libya, Sudan -- as well as Iran, potentially a much
 bigger market than Cuba.

 ``There's a real possibility that there will be big sales to Iran,'' said Mary Kay
 Thatcher, a lobbyist with the American Farm Bureau Federation.

 Cuban American National Foundation Executive Vice President Dennis Hays said
 his anti-Castro group preferred the status quo.

 ``Our position was, that if nothing at all happened, that's good,'' Hays said.

 In addition, Hays worried that the momentum to ease the embargo has not been
 halted.

 ``The agriculture guys will try to create a market in Cuba, they'll lobby Congress
 to allow [U.S.] tourism to Cuba. They'll say `we've got to give them tourists or who
 will buy our chicken parts,' '' Hays said.

 Pressure to remove at the restrictions on the sale of food and medicine to Cuba
 peaked in this session of Congress because American farm groups and the U.S.
 Chamber of Commerce stepped up an anti-sanctions drive.

 The result was an agreement brokered between Republicans seeking new
 markets for their farmers and GOP congressional leaders intent on keeping the
 embargo intact.

 A deal was needed because the dispute over Cuba had for months blocked
 progress on the huge agriculture appropriations bill.

 The House approved the farm bill last week with a 340-75 vote.

 This report was supplemented by Herald wire services.