Richard Nuccio, who served as President Clinton's special adviser for Cuban policy in 1995 and 1996, said the United States could go a long way toward improving relations without lifting its economic embargo.
``We should be leading a worldwide campaign to promote foreign investment in Cuba,'' he said Friday during a speech to more than 30 people at an academic seminar on Cuban policy.
Nuccio said the U.S. government should support conditional, limited investment, while making clear a list of recommended conditions, including that workers be paid directly and that labor have a right to organize.
The United States also should lift its ban on sales of food and medicines to Cuba, he said. ``It's bad politics, it's bad policy, and it's bad morality.''
Dwight D. Eisenhower was president in 1960 when the United States imposed a trade embargo on Cuba. Eight U.S. presidents and nearly 40 years later, the embargo remains in place.
The Clinton administration has looked for ways to expand people-to-people contacts with the island and to ease the humanitarian situation of the Cuban people without strengthening the government of President Fidel Castro.
Nuccio, now an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, resigned from the State Department after he was stripped of his highest security clearances because of his role in revelations about what he described as CIA misconduct in Guatemala. He is now writing a book about U.S. policy toward Cuba.
Without a change in policy, relations between the two countries could become volatile, Nuccio said. He said he is worried about the possibility of a military confrontation.
``I believe Castro would rather take us down with him than be the Gorbachev of Cuba,'' he said. ``I don't want to find out where the breaking point is.''
© Copyright 1999 The Associated Press