Us Envoy Seeks To Defuse Eu Ire On Cuba Sanction

Stuart Eizenstat, President Bill Clinton's special envoy on the dispute, said that if the EU took the dispute to the World Trade Organisation it would erode public support for efforts to free world trade and strengthen the protectionists' hands.

Eizenstat was speaking after a meeting with Irish foreign minister Dick Spring, whose country is current EU president and which enjoys close ties with the United States. I made a very strong plea that this not be brought before a WTO panel because it as an inappropriate case for the WTO, Eizenstat told reporters.

He said there had been no meeting of minds on Washington's Cuba sanctions, known as the Helms-Burton Act but was encouraged by Spring's pledge to try to resolve the dispute amicably while keeping pressure on Havana to democratise. Spring restated the strong objection the EU and its member states have to Helms-Burton. That objection was registered and understood.

 

He said it was a goal of the Irish presidency to try to manage differences over Helms-Burton in a way that would maintain the strength of the EU-US relationship.

Eizenstat said that if the issue was not brought to the WTO, it would help defuse trade tensions and avoid a cycle of retaliation and counter-retaliation.

It would only strengthen the hand of those in the US who oppose the WTO as well as Nafta (the North American Free Trade Agreement) and the whole multilateral system, he added.

The EU has not yet made up its mind whether to take its objections to Washington's latest sanctions against Cuba to the World Trade Organisation, which oversees efforts to free world commerce and end protectionism.