By JUAN O. TAMAYO
Herald Staff Writer
The 15-member European Union adopted a ``muscular'' policy on Cuba Monday that could lend added status to dissidents and fluster foreign businessmen considering investments in Cuba.
President Fidel Castro has already rejected the EU's linkage of trade and aid to human rights and democracy and on Sunday said in Havana that all the major reforms Cuba needed ``we carried out in 1959.''
But the EU move buttresses Washington's calls for reforms and makes it almost certain that President Clinton will again suspend an onerous section of the Helms-Burton act.
``We felt it was time to step up our activity on human rights in Cuba. We want to be more forthright, more muscular on the issue,'' said Peter Gilford, a press spokesman at EU headquarters in Brussels.
The policy, which is binding on the EU's 15 member nations, says its aim is not to punish the Cuban people but to ``encourage a process of transition to pluralist democracy and respect for human rights.''
It calls for the release of political prisoners, an end to the harassment of dissidents and pledges to ``intensify the dialogue with . . . all sectors of Cuban society'' to promote reforms.
Proposed by Spain's new right-of-center Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, the policy was to have been approved Friday. But Spain asked that the vote be moved up as a sign of European support for Madrid after Havana last week rejected Aznar's choice for new ambassador to Cuba.
European critics of the EU policy say it is unlikely to push Castro to make reforms and note that French, German and British businessmen have visited Cuba in recent weeks to explore investment possibilities.
``No doubt this will have some impact, but it will not be a decisive factor'' in any businessman's final decision on whether to invest in Cuba, said Juan Maria Arenas, a Spanish expert on Madrid-Havana trade.
Negative publicity
Other Europeans predict, however, that the EU's new policy will focus a harsh spotlight of negative publicity on Cuba that could discourage some foreigners still considering investing in the communist-ruled island.
``This could scare small and medium-sized, adventurous entrepreneurs'' who make up a big part of Cuba's foreign investor corps, said Joaquin Roy, University of Miami professor on Spain-Cuba relations.
European human rights groups say the EU policy will also give new prominence and legitimacy to anti-Castro dissidents in Cuba often unknown on the continent and sometimes dismissed as mere tools of U.S. policy.
``This will bring respect for the dissidents, make Europe more aware that there are Cubans who don't speak out because they are afraid,'' said Luduine Zumpolle of the Dutch branch of Pax Christi, a Catholic human rights group that produced a harsh report on Cuban abuses last summer.
EU officials say that report was in part responsible for blocking an effort by European liberals late last year to push through an EU proposal for a cooperation agreement with Cuba, despite Castro's rejection of its attached conditions on human rights improvements.
Change pleases Clinton
Cuba is the only Latin American country without such an EU pact, which facilitates trade, investments and aid. The EU shelved the proposal in May, and on Monday it effectively turned conditions into hard policy.
The change no doubt pleased Clinton, who had discretely offered to again postpone part of the Helms-Burton law widely condemned in Europe -- it threatens sanctions against some Europeans doing business in Cuba -- if the EU joined an international ``choir for democracy'' in Cuba.
``We welcome this important change from words to action. . . . This new common position clearly demonstrates the EU's commitment to work in a more active, coordinated and sustained fashion toward the common goal of promoting a peaceful democratic transition in Cuba,'' the State Department said Monday.
The EU policy ``will be one of the factors taken into consideration'' when Clinton decides on Jan. 16 whether to sign a second six-month postponement, said State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns.
Copyright © 1996 The Miami Herald