By Laurence McQuillan
BUENOS AIRES, Oct 16 (Reuters) - President Bill Clinton on Thursday said that signals by Cuba it was willing to change its policies would open the way for the United States to consider easing its strict economic embargo against Havana.
"It's a very sad thing because we ... are so estranged from one another and it seems so unnecessary given the way democracy and opportunity are sweeping the modern world,'' Clinton said in Argentina, the last stop on a week-long trip to South America.
After Clinton spoke during a televised "town hall'' meeting at a broadcast studio, he was asked by a woman in the audience if he honestly believed that the U.S. embargo would "help the communist regime fall.''
She told Clinton that members of her family were living on the island and that the U.S. sanctions aimed at Cuban leader Fidel Castro were causing people there to suffer.
"I still believe in the end the ball is in Cuba's court,'' Clinton told the woman, acknowledging "we don't have many people who support us'' in keeping the embargo in place.
"If there could be some signal that they want to open up and change direction, then I think even the hardest line people in the Congress, even the hardest line people in Miami -- who are basically responsible for the policy -- would be open to a different approach,'' he said.
He said the United States was in a positon "where there's not much we can do unless they're willing to do something differently.''
Under intense pressure from the Cuban-American community in Florida, the U.S. Congress last year passed the so-called Helms-Burton law expanding the 34-year-old U.S. embargo on Cuba.
It was passed shortly after four Cuban-American exiles were killed when Cuban MiGs shot down two small U.S. civilian aircraft as they were flying off the coast of Cuba.
"They shot down those two airplanes and killed those people and there was no way to stop a stronger piece of legislation coming before Congress,'' said Clinton, who signed the bill into law during last year's presidential election campaign.
The law allows lawsuits to be filed in U.S. courts against foreign firms that own or operate properties seized by Cuba from U.S. citizens who were Cuban nationals before Fidel Castro came to power in 1959.
The European Union has threatened to retailiate against U.S. firms if any of its businesses suffer from the law.
The United States said on Thursday in Washington that it had narrowed differences with the European Union over the law and expected to resume talks later this month in Brussels.
The differences "have been narrowed in the course of this week's negotiations,'' State Department spokesman James Foley said.
Brussels had earlier demanded that the issue be settled by Oct. 15 or it would resume a formal complaint against the United States at the Geneva-based World Trade Organization (WTO).
EU sources in Brussels quoted the European Union as expressing disappointment at the failure of this week's talks to resolve the issue, and calling for a more flexible approach by Washington.
22:52 10-16-97