Cuba concocts `antidote' to Helms-Burton

Published Thursday, January 2, 1997, in the Miami Herald CORRESPONDENT'S LETTER BY JUAN O. TAMAYO

Cuba concocts `antidote' to Helms-Burton

Imagine this:

A Cuban files suit, in a Havana court, against the U.S. government for damages caused by the Bay of Pigs invasion.

A Cuban files suit, again in Cuba, against a former Batista-era police torturer who now lives in Miami and is a U.S. citizen.

A Cuban is jailed in Havana on charges of aiding and abetting the enemy by merely granting an interview to the U.S. government's Radio Marti.

Bizarre possibilities all, no?

Yet all are explicitly included in a new Cuban ``antidote'' law against the U.S. Helms-Burton Act, designed to give U.S. citizens the right to sue in U.S. courts over properties seized by the Cuban government.

President Clinton, who opposed Helms-Burton until Congress approved it last spring, is expected to sign another six-month delay Jan. 16 on the most controversial section of the law.

But Cuba is taking no chances and last week adopted a Draconian retort to Helms-Burton during a two-day session of the National Assembly.

Here are the main points of the ``antidote'' law:

It declares Helms-Burton, and any legal actions arising from it, to be ``null, void and without merit.''

It orders the Justice Ministry to set up special courts to hear suits by Cuban citizens for events as far back as 1898 and including ``theft, torture, corruption, and murders'' by Batista-era officials who fled to the United States.

It authorizes Cuban citizens to sue the U.S. government and Cuban Americans for damages arising from U.S. military actions, U.S.-sponsored ``terrorism'' and the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.

The measure makes it a crime, with stiff punishments, for U.S. and other publications to seek or provide information that may be useful to implementing Helms-Burton -- for example, property registries.

It specifically makes it a crime for Cuban citizens to collaborate in any way with Radio or TV Marti, on grounds that the U.S. government stations promote implementation of Helms-Burton.

It offers Cuban government support to foreign companies that want to hide their investments or business activities in Cuba to circumvent the possibility of Helms-Burton sanctions.

If all that sounds like so much empty or at least improbable rhetoric, consider the statements by National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon as the legislature closed:

Any U.S. citizen or company that takes action against Cuba in U.S. courts under the Helms-Burton law will be excluded by Havana from any future indemnification agreement it may reach with the United States.

Any Cuban citizen claims filed under the antidote law will be taken into account by the Cuban government in any future negotiations with Washington to normalize U.S.-Cuba relations.

In a further attempt to undermine U.S. pressure on Cuba, the law also made tax-free all cash received by Cubans from relatives abroad. Clinton banned all such remittances, estimated by the Cuban government at over $400 million in 1995.

And it made it legal for Cuban Americans to purchase different forms of insurance, including life retirement insurance, for relatives -- a way of attracting more and more exile dollars.

Cuba's tit-for-tat approach is nothing new.

Every time U.S. officials mention that American firms have claims worth some $6 billion against Cuba for properties seized in the 1960s, Havana officials counter that U.S. embargo damages to Cuba now total $40 billion.

But the harshness of the ``antidote'' law underlines Cuba's view of Helms-Burton as far more than an honest legal maneuver to secure payments for U.S. citizens who lost properties in Cuba.

``It's war,'' President Fidel Castro told the closing session of the legislature last week.