WASHINGTON, March 5 (Reuters) - A congressional staff report released on Thursday recommended increased support, including the use of U.S. government funds, for a coordinated campaign to boost humanitarian aid to Cuba's people.
The report, prepared by congressional staffers who visited Cuba during Pope John Paul II's visit in January, said aid delivered through the Catholic Church and independent nongovernmental organizations would help undermine "the deprivation that the regime uses as a means of control."
"This program should emphasize donated food and medicine and could include material support purchased with U.S. government funds," the report said.
It also called for maintaining the 36-year-old U.S. economic embargo against the Caribbean island, and stricter enforcement of the Helms-Burton law that tightened the embargo in 1996 by discouraging foreign investment in Cuba.
The report was prepared by Roger Noriega and Mark Thiessen, staffers of the Senate Foreign Relations committee chaired by conservative North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms, and Caleb McCarry of the House Committee on International Relations.
Helms is co-author of the Helms-Burton law and a longtime advocate of harsh economic sanctions against the communist government of Cuban President Fidel Castro.
Helms had endorsed a proposal in January by a leading Cuban exile organization, the Cuban American Foundation, to send millions of dollars in U.S. government aid to Cuba to be distributed by the Catholic Church or American Red Cross. Castro vetoed the plan.
Legislation has been proposed in the House and Senate that would allow the unfettered sale of U.S. food and medicine to Cuba for humanitarian reasons.
The report, based on interviews with government officials and ordinary citizens during a 10-day visit, accused the Castro government of employing a policy of coercing abortions from certain categories of women labeled "social risk pregnancies."
It also accused foreign companies that employ Cubans of using "slave labor" by paying large hard cash subsidies to a Cuban government agency that supplies the workers, while the agency pays the workers themselves small salaries.
22:08 03-05-98