[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 118 (Friday, August 19, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 19, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                            FREEDOM FOR CUBA

  (Mr. GINGRICH asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GINGRICH. Mr. Speaker, the total absence of any moral compass in 
the Clinton administration policy toward the Caribbean was made evident 
this morning for anyone who looked at the new decision about Cuban 
refugees who, since 1966, have always been accepted in the United 
States under a law passed by the Congress. We have been told 
dictatorships are bad; Castro has been a dictator since 1959. We are 
told oppressing the innocent is terrible; they are now shooting people 
in the streets in Havana. We have been told we have to be against 
dictatorships in the Caribbean. In fact, the administration is 
practicing to invade one country, a country 600 miles away--Cuba is 90 
miles away--a country with a much more recent dictatorship, with a much 
weaker process of repression, but Cuba, somehow, we are now told by our 
friends, we should treat as though it was China, we should open up our 
doors, we should have good relations. I think that is exactly wrong. I 
urge the President:

       Now is the time to tell Castro we want to negotiate for 
     free elections, with international observers, and, if you 
     refuse to negotiate for free elections, we will take such 
     steps as are necessary so that your regime is no longer 
     there.

  Across the planet communism is collapsing. Cuba has no nuclear 
weapons, they are not a great power, they are not a threat, and the 
fact is that the Castro regime is vulnerable, and the time has come to 
have an aggressive policy of favoring freedom and favoring those Cubans 
who want to be free.

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