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“SELLING FOOD TO CUBA” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Senate section on pages S4248 on May 13, 2002.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
SELLING FOOD TO CUBA
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me talk about two other issues briefly. One is a letter I received last Friday from Secretary of State Colin Powell. This relates to a decision by the State Department to cancel the visas for Cubans coming to our country to buy additional food. Since the hurricane, they have purchased over $70 million in American food. That is available for them to purchase because I and my colleague from Connecticut, Senator Dodd, and others changed the law to allow food sales to Cuba. Strangely enough, they have to pay in cash and do it through a French bank; nonetheless, they can finally buy American food.
We ought never use food as a weapon, and we have done it for 40 years with Cuba. That is over. They are now buying food from this country. We had a group of people representing Alimport, including Pedro Alvarez and others, coming to this country to buy food. They were coming, in fact, to North Dakota and they were going to buy dried beans and wheat. They were granted a visa by the State Department, and then immediately that visa was revoked. I asked Secretary Powell, ``By what authority was it revoked and why?''
Let me use a couple of charts to see what happened on this issue. This is a news story about it:
A State Department official confirmed Wednesday that the administration policy is not to encourage sales of food to Cuba.
In the letter from Secretary Powell, he disavows that, but that is what they told us: It is our policy not to encourage food sales to Cuba. I said it is a brainless policy to decide you do not want to sell food to Cuba; you ought to sell food to Cuba. We sell it to China, a Communist country. We sell it to Vietnam, a Communist country. And we are told we do not want to sell food to Cuba? Does anybody think Fidel Castro has not eaten a meal along the way because we had an obstruction on the sale of food to Cuba? No, it just hurts sick people, poor people, and hungry people. This is what this policy has represented.
At a hearing last week when I raised this question with Secretary Powell, he said: I have never heard of this policy not to encourage food sales to Cuba. In fact, he said additional sales should be encouraged so long as American farmers benefit.
The Farm Bureau said the cancellation of Mr. Alvarez's visa will adversely affect the sale of corn, rice, wheat, poultry, soybeans, lentils, and eggs, valued at $35 million.
I received a four-page letter from Secretary Powell. Frankly, it does not answer any of the questions. It says Mr. Alvarez's visa was revoked because of a 1985 then-President Ronald Reagan directive. He also said: Mr. Alvarez was here once before and he lobbied to undermine the U.S. embargo. I guess when he was here before, he said Cuba would like to have a circumstance where they could buy food from American farmers. The State Department considers that undermining America's interest. Give me a break. Mr. Secretary, that does not undermine anything. I hope the State Department and others will pay a little more attention to the issue of terrorists getting bombs, not Cubans buying dried beans and wheat.
The subcommittee which I chair is going to hold a hearing, and I will ask the Assistant Secretary, Mr. Reich, to come to Congress and explain who decided to revoke these visas.
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