[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 72 (Wednesday, May 3, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H4515]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                   OPPOSING THE AGREEMENT WITH CASTRO

  (Mr. DIAZ-BALART asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, the secretly negotiated agreement 
between the Clinton administration and Fidel Castro, announced 
yesterday, to return Cuban refugees to Castro's state security is 
unprecedented as well as immoral.
  As Speaker Gingrich declared yesterday, for the first time in 
history, the U.S. Government has agreed to cooperate with a Communist 
dictatorship's security forces in order to carry out the forced return 
of refugees who managed to escape.

                              {time}  1115

  The administration now says that Castro has given it assurances that 
those refugees turned over to state security will not be persecuted, 
and yet they did not even ask Castro to abrogate his own law that 
requires jailtime for those caught trying to leave without permission. 
An administration official told me yesterday not to worry, that Castro 
has prosecutorial discretion. This, Mr. Speaker, this incident, this 
agreement, is shameful. It is another attempt to appease a totalitarian 
dictator who will still not be satisfied by the McGovernites who now 
control American foreign policy.

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