By JUAN O. TAMAYO
Herald Staff Writer
Europeans are increasingly adopting investment guidelines to promote democracy in Cuba and will soon start the first independent TV news broadcast to the island, a special U.S. envoy on Cuba says.
``The whole atmosphere in Europe is beginning to change,'' said Commerce Undersecretary Stuart Eizenstat. The changes will not topple President Fidel Castro ``but may help create breathing space in Cuba,'' he said.
Eizenstat, appointed by President Clinton in August to disarm world outrage over the Helms-Burton law, told The Herald Thursday that what started out as ``mission impossible'' had turned into ``mission achievable.''
Clinton is expected to again postpone part of the law most opposed by Europe in response to the European Union's decision last week to link relations with Havana to human rights and democratic reforms.
In exchange, the 15-member European Union might slow the legal challenge to Helms-Burton that it has filed before the Geneva-based World Trade Organization on the grounds that the law threatens some foreign firms doing business with Cuba.
European businessmen, meanwhile, have started to endorse investment guidelines that promote democracy in Cuba, Eizenstat said, such as hiring workers directly instead of through the Cuban government, and supporting independent labor unions.
The ``Best Business'' guidelines were endorsed last month by the Trans Atlantic Business Dialogue, a group of 100 top business leaders from Europe and the United States.
A Dutch organization representing 80 percent of the Netherlands' private sector has followed suit and the German government will soon send a letter to business groups explaining the guidelines, Eizenstat said.
Europe's ``union of unions'' -- The International Conference of Free Trade Unions -- issued a report last month condemning labor conditions in Cuba, he added.
And the EU's television agency, Euronews, will soon begin delivering a half-hour program of general news to Cuba for local rebroadcast, Eizenstat said. It would be the first independent news watched by a mass Cuban audience since the 1960s.
Eizenstat was in Miami to give the Cuban exile community a progress report on his mission, totaling 50,000 miles of travel in five trips to Europe and more to Canada and Mexico.
``You are no longer alone,'' he said. ``It is Fidel Castro and not the Cuban community that is isolated.''
At the United Nations, meanwhile, the General Assembly adopted a resolution criticizing human rights violations in Cuba and urging the Castro government to guarantee fundamental rights and free political prisoners. The vote was 62-25 with 84 abstention s.
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