Bringing Down a Ban

The diplomatic and economic quarantine of Cuba by the Organization of American States has been tough to sustain--and equally tough to get off the books. Last year, before a meeting of OAS foreign ministers in Quito, it seemed like a good bet that delegates of pro-Cuba countries had rounded up the two-thirds majority needed to vote out the ten-year-old embargo, which now throws only a very tattered curtain around Castro's island. Much to everyone's surprise, the anti-embargo forces fell two votes short, chiefly because the U.S. delegation took a studied attitude of "negative neutrality" on the issue. It did not oppose the initiative, but it did not support it either.

Last week the 24 OAS members began a twelve-day meeting in San Jose, Costa Rica. This time the odds were even stronger that the embargo would end. Reason: Washington has become more positive, not toward Cuba directly but toward the freedom of Latin American nations to pursue their own course on the matter.

Technically, the OAS ministers are meeting to amend the 1947 Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (the Treaty of Rio), under which the embargo was initially imposed. The aim was to drop the two-thirds majority provision on the lifting of sanctions and replace it with a simple majority vote. The change requires a two-thirds majority, but at least 14 of the 21 Rio Treaty signers were expected to go along.

No Plans. The U.S. contribution has been to affirm that bilateral relations between OAS members and Cuba are essentially private affairs. If the treaty amendment passes, the U.S. is ready to attend a second OAS meeting where members will consider a resolution releasing them from their obligations under the embargo. The U.S. will support the resolution, in effect accomplishing what was not done at Quito: lifting the ban by a two-thirds vote. (Reason for another meeting: without it, the Rio Treaty amendment would have to be ratified individually by member states, a process that could take years.) Then, said one U.S. observer, "each country will be able to do as it pleases."

Many already have, and that is the problem as the U.S. sees it. So far, seven Rio signators have ignored the treaty in order to maintain or establish diplomatic relations with Cuba, including, most recently, Venezuela and Colombia. Although the U.S. has no plans to soften soon its own stance on Cuba, it is accepting the inevitable. It now prefers that the OAS formally end the ban rather than doing it de facto.

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