CUBAN-DEALING CANADIANS RISK
BEING ABDUCTED, WARNS HELMS
By ROBERT RUSSO
Canadian executives doing business with Communist Cuba could be
snatched off the street and returned to Havana to face trial if Fidel Castro is
overthrown, a U.S. Congressman said Tuesday.
And Senator Jesse Helms compared those executives to Neville
Chamberlain consorting with Adolf Hitler before the Second World War.
The warning of potential kidnappings was part of a blistering attack on
Canada and other countries that have allowed their investors to deal with
Cuba under Castro.
Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Florida congressman and nephew of Castro,
told a conference that it was a matter of time before democracy is restored
to Cuba.
"Castro's days, whether he dies of natural causes or whether someone puts a
bullet in his head, are numbered," the Republican said.
When that day comes, agents working on behalf of a free Cuba will go after
foreign executives who "collaborated with Castro," he said. "They will
enforce the law of Cuba -- even extra-territorially -- grabbing a few
investors to bring them to trial a la Eichmann."
Adolf Eichmann was a former Nazi SS colonel who was kidnapped by
Israeli agents and returned to Israel to stand trial for war crimes. He was
hanged in 1962.
Diaz-Balart didn't mention any potential targets by name, but he did single
out Canadian mining giant Sherritt International Corp. as a company that
was "profiting from the misery of Cuban people."
U.S. President Bill Clinton must decide by Tuesday if he will waive a
section of the Helms-Burton law that would allow Americans to sue
Canadian companies that "traffic" in nationalized property formerly owned
by U.S. citizens in Cuba.