Clinton Pledges Aid for Post-Castro Cuba

WASHINGTON — President Clinton pledged Tuesday to lead a team of international donors in providing $4 billion to $8 billion to revive the devastated economy of Cuba once it is rid of dictator Fidel Castro and on the road to democracy.

In a report for Congress endorsed by Clinton, the White House said the United States would even be willing to give up its Guantanamo naval base on Cuban soil to show that it wants normal relations with a new Cuba.

The report was required by controversial legislation passed by Congress and signed by the president last year after Cuban fighter planes shot down two small planes flown by Cuban American pilots.

“The United States is committed to help the Cuban people in a transition to democracy,” Clinton told Congress in his preface to the report. “We will continue working with others in the international community who share our desire to welcome Cuba into the ranks of prosperous democratic nations.”

The report, drafted for the White House mainly by the Agency for International Development, offered no hint of how Castro, 70, might disappear from the helm of Cuba. But it was generally optimistic about the chances of Cuba making a smooth transition from communism to democracy afterward.

That recovery would be expensive, however. The report estimated that $4 billion to $8 billion--from $360 to $720 for each of the 11 million people on the island--would be needed in the first six years. Even adjusted for inflation, that kind of cost would put the program on a scale greater than the Marshall Plan that helped Europe to recover from the ravages of World War II.

The cost, the report said, would not fall on the United States alone. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, the European Union and several governments would contribute too. But, the report went on, “due to proximity and national interest, the United States can be expected to be the predominant bilateral provider of such assistance.”

Rep. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), author of the provision in the legislation that required the report, said the White House had been hesitant about setting down an estimated cost out of fear that it would seem as if the administration was trying to bind Congress to a figure. But Menendez said he persuaded the White House to include the estimate. “A report without a figure would be hollow,” he said.

After six years of transition to a free market economy, Cuba, the report said, would no longer need foreign assistance; private funds would be sufficient to power a healthy economy. Cuban Americans probably would send more than $1 billion a year to relatives in Cuba, and “dramatic increases in foreign investment can be expected to provide much of the capital needed for Cuba’s economic recovery.”

Cuba would also have advantages over other countries in the former Soviet Bloc in making the transition from communism, the White House said. Cuba already has suffered the shock of the post-Soviet trade collapse; because it has no heavy industry, Cuba would not have to go through the industrial shutdowns and job cuts that Eastern Europe experienced.

The administration promised to begin conducting normal relations with Cuba as soon as it has a government “committed to the establishment of a fully democratic, pluralistic society.” The first step would be lifting the economic embargo on Cuba, the report said, adding: “The United States is also prepared to enter into negotiations to either return the naval base at Guantanamo or to renegotiate the present agreement under mutually agreeable terms.”

The United States has leased the land for the naval base on the southeastern tip of Cuba since 1903 for a minuscule sum. The annual rent, set at $2,000 in the original treaty, was increased to $3,300 in 1934 and has not been renegotiated since.

The congressional demand for a report on U.S. support for a Cuban transition to democracy was one of the least controversial provisions in last year’s law, the Helms-Burton Act, named for its sponsors, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.). The act has infuriated Canada, Mexico and Western Europe with its provisions that try to punish foreign companies for operating in Cuba on property confiscated from U.S. citizens by the Castro government.