THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

October 6, 1995

PRESS BRIEFING
BY MIKE MCCURRY

The Briefing Room

[excerpts]

             Next, you noticed in the President's speech this morning that he made reference to some adjustments, a series of steps that he has directed in order to invigorate the Cuban Democracy Act.  These are all consistent with this administration's firm support for the Cuban Democracy Act and in furtherance of our goal of promoting a peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba

             Q    Have you heard anything from Castro on this?

             MR. MCCURRY:  Well, we will -- I don't know if we've had a readout, but I can tell you that after the President's announcement this morning we have had a presentation made by our Cuban Interests Section in Havana to the Cuban Foreign Ministry.  So they have presented this material.  I don't know that we have heard back yet on what type of reaction we've had from the Cuban government

             Let me just do a couple things specifically on what steps beyond the things I think the President pretty well covered this morning, but just go through a little bit on that.  And then I've got a team here who can help you if you've got any additional questions

             First, to point out what I think is the main point the President was making today, that the series of steps that he directed to be taken today will ultimately strengthen our enforcement of the embargo, which remains a primary tool available to the United States government as we seek change in Cuba and as we implement the law, specifically the Cuban Democracy Act

             Q    Why do you say that?

             MR. MCCURRY:  Because the types of measures that we allow today will make it possible for those who enforce the law -- and, by the way, the Office of Foreign Assets Compliance -- is that right -- Control -- that enforces this embargo at the Treasury Department will be considerably strengthened as a result of measures the President announced today, but it will allow them to focus on egregious abuses. It doesn't -- right now, technically, when you've got someone who has got a dire humanitarian concern in Cuba, a relative who is sick who doesn't have time to wait to apply for a license at Treasury, Treasury technically has to enforce the law and look at situations like  that. They now will be freed from those specific types of cases and they can concentrate on what are clear violations of the law and clear violations of the embargo.  But that's among others --

             Q    Can I just follow up?

             MR. MCCURRY:  Can I just tell you what we're doing, and then you can ask whatever questions you'd like

             First of all, the President, as he noted today, stresses that the steps he's taking are consistent with the spirit and the letter of the Cuban Democracy Act and they implement precisely what the act itself calls for, which is to use the embargo effectively to put pressure on the Castro government and help those people and forces in Cuba that are struggling to achieve democratic change in Cuba

             Nothing in today's decision reflects a weakening of the President's commitment to the embargo.  In fact, on the contrary.  Every element of the embargo remains in place and the means to enforce it will be strengthened.  At the same time, the administration will reenergize its efforts to reach out to the Cuban people through the free flow of ideas and information, and by strengthening the island's fledgling civil society, really reaching out to those who are themselves taking risks to promote peaceful change in Cuba

             We have seen as the Cold War ended and as democracy and market economics emerged triumphant around the world where totalitarianism held sway, that ideas, information, the exchange of information about the benefits of democracy really were the driving force that inspired those who were able to bring down communist, totalitarian regimes.  What we're seeking to do here is to reach out to the Cuban people who themselves are struggling against the effects of totalitarianism so that they can bring about the type of peaceful change in Cuba that will improve the lives of civil society in Cuba

             Now, specifically, what steps the President directed today: First of all, he directed the Attorney General to step up enforcement of the embargo and the Neutrality Act.  He directed a strengthening of the Office of Foreign Assets Control at Treasury, both here in Washington and I guess at regional offices that they maintain in Miami

             As far as promoting democratic transition in Cuba, the steps initiated by the President today would authorize the issuance of licenses on a case-by-case basis for transactions that support the Cuban people.  Support would be allowed, for example, for activities of human rights organizations or specific Cuban individuals or nongovernmental organizations.  This would allow them to conceivably send faxes to groups down in Cuba to exchange ideas with people who are themselves promoting change in Cuba.  And you heard the President announce today the first grant that would be available under this new policy which he made to Freedom House which will be working with Cuban nongovernmental organizations

             Q    How much money?

             MR. MCCURRY:  $500,000.  It was a $500,000 grant that the President awarded today

             The President also authorized the issuance of specific licenses for the establishment and operation of reciprocal news bureaus here in the United States and in Cuba so that U.S. news organizations that wish to cover Cuba more carefully or more directly would be able to establish a presence in Cuba.  And then, should that happen and should we be satisfied that there is a commitment by the Cuban government to allow news organizations that type of access, we could reciprocally provide that type of access to Cuban news organizations here in the United States

             Q  Are you saying the Cubans have to allow U.S. news organizations to operate first, and then the U.S. would respond?

             MR. MCCURRY:  That's correct.  We'd like to see that they begin to work with you all and with news organizations and allow the establishment of permanent bureaus, presumably in Havana or elsewhere, before we would take any reciprocal measures here

             Q  Who can tell our people specifically what steps they need to take?

             MR. MCCURRY:  Well, I think the point of contact, first, would be Treasury because my guess is most of your news organizations have had contact with the Office of Foreign Assets Control in the past. When you've arranged for a journalist to go to Cuba, they would, in the past, would have needed very specific license approval to do that.  So you've got a working relationship or people that you work with have got a working relationship already.  But that would be the first point of contact for those news organizations interested in a bureau there

             Q    You mean at Foreign Assets Control?

             MR. MCCURRY:  At Treasury, correct

             Q    And it's effective immediately?

             MR. MCCURRY:  Yes.  These steps are effective immediately. They do not require any legislative act, but they do require some amendments to the Cuban assets control regulations which Treasury maintains.  And those will be made effective immediately

             Q  Mike, are you familiar with plans by a group of 47 corporate executives to travel to Cuba today?

             MR. MCCURRY:  That's the Time Magazine news tour?

             Q  Yes.  How are they traveling, and are they traveling as journalists?  Are they traveling as business leaders?  And isn't this a crack in the embargo?

             MR. MCCURRY:  No.  They are traveling under sponsorship of something called The Time Magazine News Tour which is something Time, Inc. runs, I believe, every 10 years.  It's a group of high-level figures from journalism or from the private sector who make various -- they will be touring various places around the world.  And then they customarily come back and prepare a report on their activities.  This group, for this particular trip to Cuba, applied to Treasury under the previous regulations.  There's nothing about it, with the steps the President announced today, that affected this particular group because they had to submit formally their license applications to Treasury under the existing regulations.  And they were reviewed properly by Treasury and granted licenses

             Q    As what?  Journalists?

             MR. MCCURRY:  They are traveling -- I believe, they are traveling as journalists.  But is it a collective group or was each individual licensed?  Collective group

             Q  Mike, if a little bit of information and exchange and openness is a good idea, why wouldn't a whole lot more be better?  I mean, why not just get rid of the embargo?  Some of the dissidents who you mentioned and the President mentioned, in fact, in Cuba and in Florida say that's a policy that the United States should pursue

             MR. MCCURRY:  Well, our sense of what it will take to bring about change in Cuba is predicated on the premises set forth very clearly in the Cuba Democracy Act

             It's important to point out that the Cuban Democracy Act enjoys bipartisan support.  It has been the tool that both the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch have committed to use as we seek to bring about changing Cuba

             I think everyone here is aware of the different points of view in the Congress on how to most effectively bring about changing Cuba.  But I'd stress that what we are doing today is by allowing a freer exchange and by, in a sense, opening up to the Cuban people more information about the benefits of democracy, we can help promote that change consistent with the Act.  And simultaneously, we can continue to use the embargo as a way to bring pressure on the Cuban regime itself to make the necessary changes

             Q    Mike, how about family remittances?

             MR. MCCURRY:  Let me go through -- I stopped short of finishing the other aspects of the steps the President announced today

             They will also -- regulations governing travel to Cuba will be clarified and amended.  Specific license will be issued for transactions relating to travel to Cuba and for all genuine research, new gathering, cultural, education, religious or other human rights purposes.  Transactions related to tourism will continue to remain strictly prohibited

             Remittances -- your specific question -- there's not chance in the rules.  Money transfers to Cuba are allowed to pay currently for legal immigrations costs, and in cases of humanitarian need, the only adjustment here is that the President has authorized Western Union to open offices in the United States and Cuba which will allow -- I presume -- electronic money transfers to take place.  That will make it easier for these transfers to occur and cheaper for the individual people who are attempting to make those transfers, consistent with current law. But it would help those who are seeking to lawfully immigrate from Cuba when they have a right to do so

             On travel -- there's one -- let me just finish the one last aspect of this.  On travel the steps the President directed today would also authorize general licenses for transactions in connection with travel to Cuba to visit close relatives.  In humanitarian cases, this would involve getting a general license which would apply to a once-only per calendar year visit to Cuba for specific humanitarian needs.  And that would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis

             In short, these are, I would say, fairly modest adjustments to the current regime of regulations that we maintain consistent with the embargo.  But they are specifically allowed, in fact anticipated, in the Cuban Democracy Act.  They represent a commitment by the administration to that Act and to steps that we believe can continue to bring pressure to bear on the Cuban regime to get on the right side of history and get on with the type of change that will bring democracy and market economics to the people of Cuba who so desperately need it

             Q  Mike, to encourage democracy in Haiti, the administration sent U.S. troops, but to encourage democracy in Cuba, you're sending bureau chiefs.  (Laughter.)  Is the goal here that this will open up forces that will cause the Castro regime to be more democratic and more market-oriented, or it will open up forces that will overthrow the Castro regime?

             MR. MCCURRY:  Laugh though you might, if you think about the history of Eastern Europe, if you think of the extraordinary events in Tiananmen Square in 1989, if you think about the change that has occurred in this world fairly recently, there's good reason to believe that free-flow of information, exposure to democratic ideals and the example that the United States sets in this world can be a powerfully motivating device when it comes to helping people make change.  And so we would suggest --

             Q  To reforming Castro or to leading to forces that get rid of Castro?

             MR. MCCURRY:  We are interested in peaceful change in Cuba. That is the premise of the Cuban Democracy Act and it has been the long-standing policy not only of the Clinton administration but prior administrations

             Q  Is Castro coming to the U.N. for the 50th anniversary?

             MR. MCCURRY:  He's -- to my knowledge, he has not yet applied for a visa.  There's no visa application pending

             Q  The change presupposes the fact that we are going to let journalists go.  Have the Cubans said they're going to allow -- or is this a way of putting pressure on them to put their money where there mouth is and say --

             MR. MCCURRY:  You'll have to ask at the State Department as they get a report from the initial discussion we've had with the Cuban government through our interest section in Havana.  That will -- we would certainly hope so.  We would expect so.  We'd see no reason why the Castro regime would seek to bar those news organizations interested in providing coverage from the island.  But it will be subsequent discussions

             Q  Mike, with the, what you call -- in these restrictions today, it would seem you're still clamping down much harder on Cuba in terms of economic quarantine and isolation than we ever did with the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.  We had bureaus in most of the Cold War and we had far more trade, of course.  We had Jackson-Vanik, but that doesn't amount to an absolute economic quarantine.  If, as you say, you look forward to the dynamic of interchange and exchange of ideas as providing some movement toward democratic reform in Cuba, why not go further?  Why not use the very thing that we said after the Cold War to produce the results with perestroika and Gorbachov and reform finally in the Soviet Union -- why not accelerate that?

             MR. MCCURRY:  Well, several points.  First, in a sense, that's almost precisely what we're doing here.  By allowing more information to be available to allow more contact between the people of Cuba and people from the United States who can certainly be ambassadors of goodwill, we will, hopefully, engender exactly that type of phenomenon

             But I would caution against assuming there's one paradigm that describes change as countries make the necessary transition from totalitarianism to market economics and democracy.  Every country is going to experience that transition in a different way.  The policy, carefully calibrated policy, that has been developed with respect to Cuba is the result of a longstanding series of agreements between the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch.  They reflect, frankly, the political reality that everyone here is aware of and they reflect what we believe we can do and what Presidents and Congresses consistently have believed we can do to bring about that type of change

             Q  But what you're really saying, Mike, is that Florida politics was not an inhibiting factor with regard to your Soviet relations

             MR. MCCURRY:  No, I didn't say that.  Look, you can already --

             Q    Well, what do you mean by political reality?

             MR. MCCURRY:  You can listen to any number of members of Congress who will have a variety of views that they will express on these steps.  There will be some who say this is not -- doesn't go far enough, which is the premise of your question, and you'll hear today from members of Congress presumably who will think this is not a good idea, or at least some people within the Cuban American community who will say it's not a good idea.  You'll also hear from people who say this makes sense.  This is exactly the type of carefully calibrated response that is anticipated by the Cuban Democracy Act and it also does not represent any fundamental change in the thrust of the policy which is embedded in that act.  And that's as it should be

             Q  There was some confusion in Newark the other night about what, if anything, the President and the Pope had to say to each other on the subject of Cuba.  And I just wondered if the President had given the Pope any indication of this plan that he is announcing today

             MR. MCCURRY:  No.  This would be, frankly -- compared to the discussion they had, which I understand was generally on the situation in Cuba, what we saw as the prospect for changing Cuba, and broadly defined, this would be much too narrow a subject in a sense for the Pontiff and the President to explore

             They had a, I think as you were briefed by Mary Ellen Glynn, a very brief discussion of Cuba, it was fairly general in nature, was my understanding -- although her account of that was authoritative

             Q  What is the difference between the tightening of the embargo that you're imposing now and what Helms wants to do?

             MR. MCCURRY:  The difference -- you want to take a -- the Helms-Burton Act has got some features that we like, but I think's it's probably correct to say some of the things that we like about it are reflected here

             But let me introduce -- I've got a variety of people here and I'll introduce them and they may want to correct anything wrong I've said.  But in particular, Richard Nuccio is the Special Assistant to the President and Secretary of State for Cuba, who has been the overall coordinator of the work that our interagency process is doing on Cuba. Anne Patterson is here also from the State Department.  She is Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs and also Head -- oh, I didn't even realize; congratulations -- Head of the U.S. Delegation for the Cuban Migration Talks.  That's a promotion since the last time I saw here.  And Richard Newcomb, who's Director of the Office of Foreign Access Control at Treasury, is here, too

             Let me, Rick, turn it over to you and see if you've got something specific and then --

             DR. NUCCIO:  What the Secretary of State said in the letter that he issued as part of the Statement of Administration Policy is that while the Helms-Burton bills -- and there's some difference between them -- have the same goal of a peaceful democratic transition, his analysis of them -- and I would say I share that analysis -- is that many of the specific measures go in the opposite direction of proposing -- promoting a peaceful democratic transition

             It's already been used -- the provisions on property have already been used by the regime to promote the idea inside Cuba that people in the United States are only interested in reclaiming houses and hospitals and schools from the Cuban people.  It will provoke a fight, public fight, with some of our closest allies.  And it places Cuba above every -- virtually every other interest that the United States has in the world, whether it's promoting a democratic transition in Russia or our trade obligations with our NAFTA partners, or with our GATT partners.  And I think there's only person who wants Cuba at the center of U.S. foreign policy, and that's the President of Cuba, not of the United States

             So we have some differences in the instruments, although we share the goal of the Helms-Burton bill, and we're trying to produce changes that would allow the President to cooperate with him

             Q  Does it make it more likely, then, that the President will veto Helms-Burton?

             DR. NUCCIO:  I think the recommendation is on the Burton bill, which has many more problems for the administration than the Helms bill.  We met two weeks ago.  We will be meeting again with some of the people behind the Helms bill.  And we hope to resolve the remaining differences, although we're getting later in the game than we would like to be

             Q  Some Democratic congressmen who have been involved in the Cuban issue are complaining that the White House did not adequately brief them on these changes in policy towards Cuba.  Is that -- was there a major mistake involving this?

             DR. NUCCIO:  Well, I guess they'll have to tell you if it was a mistake, but I was authorized by the President during August and early September to speak a with a number of people -- those we thought would likely be favorably disposed to some of the issues we were considering, and those we thought would be most adamantly opposed to them.  And when the President made his decisions, he had -- he was able to reflect upon the feedback he had gotten from those consultations.  We did not consult with everyone, but we did include Democrats among those with whom we consulted

             Q  Can I follow up?  Were there any informal exchanges or notifications through back channels or diplomatic channels to the Cuba government of President Castro that these changes were about to occur?

             DR. NUCCIO:  No -- I understand that I will be contradicting what you said just a little while ago, but that's not the case.  These are all track-two measures.  That is, they are things that we do unilaterally because we believe they're in the interest of the United States, and because we think it would help the Cuban people.  And the Cuban government was informed today after the President's decision -- I guess it was today -- after the President's decision simply out of courtesy that they would hear it from us rather than reading perhaps some erroneous accounts in their own newspapers

             Q  Well, how can it be unilateral when everything is really mutual and reciprocal?

             DR. NUCCIO:  Well, there's only one thing in here that has a reciprocity to it, which is the news bureaus.  And the way this would work is, you will go and negotiate with the Cuban government -- your company, your bureau will negotiate with the Cuban government.  We will only get involved as a government when you come back with an agreement, and we will reflect on whether we have a range of national print, electronic, regional media represented in Cuba that give a fair and objective coverage for all of the United States, not just a couple of agencies

             Q    So then it would have to be reciprocal?

             DR. NUCCIO:  Well, it has to be reciprocal in that sense -- that when we see good coverage for you and access for you to Cuba, we will happy to have the benefits of having Granma and Radio Rebelde here

             Q  Well, you who have drafted this easing up surely don't think that people are not going to think this is a softening and an easing of the restrictions.  I mean, no matter Mike's rhetoric, you cannot interpret it as anything else but an easing

             DR. NUCCIO:  Well, I speak on the Cuban issue a lot, and a lot in Miami, so I'm used to people interpreting what I say exactly the opposite of what it is.  But I'll have to tell you that having worked for Congressman Torricelli, having been a part of the Cuban Democracy Act, I learned a long time ago that the only way to work on Cuba policy is precisely to go forward on two tracks -- to both tighten the embargo and reach out to the Cuban people.  And that's what these measures do

             Q  But you can't expect us to call this a tightening of policy

             DR. NUCCIO:  Well, I can't require you to do anything, but I can explain what our intention and what we think the measures actually do in terms of Cuba.  And I'll bet you that you will see pictures in the newspaper with some people with their arms behind their back having been arrested by U.S. officials not for dealing in cocaine, but for trying to traffic money into Cuba from the United States

             Q  Will there be any chance soon for some pharmaceutical and food companies to do business in Cuba?

             DR. NUCCIO:  No, there's no change in the embargo prohibition on sales of food and medicine to Cuba

             Q  Can I ask either a question to you or to Mike, actually, which is, what is intended by the symbolism of meeting with the 47 heads of industry today at the White House, will meet with the senior foreign policy team, and then travel to Havana tonight?

             MR. MCCURRY:  Well, they have an extensive schedule that goes well beyond Cuba.  This is sheer coincidence that this particular announcement was made by the President today and that group is here today.  In fact, we -- to be very candid, we had initially anticipated doing this yesterday, but we just had -- I was thinking of all of you -- we had quite a bit of news yesterday, and we held this announcement until today simply to make everyone's life a little bit easier

             Q    And when was the trip approved?

             MR. MCCURRY:  At least several weeks ago, because it's been -- I was contacted at least a month and a half ago just to make some arrangements for them to have briefings

             Q    What happened to the offer to establish --

             Q    How many -- 147?

             MR. MCCURRY:  To be honest, we were scrambling around to try to get people to be available to brief them, because it's a distinguished group, and we wanted to greet them graciously here.  But it was, I assure you, not connected to anything relating to this -- adjustments in our policy

             Q  What happened to the effort to establish direct postal links with Cuba?  Has it been dropped or has it been offered to Cuba?

             MR. MCCURRY:  I'm sorry, say again?

             Q    Postal links

             DR. NUCCIO:  Whoever read a classified memo to some members of the press read an earlier version than the version that the President had, and when they were violating the law.  And we didn't need to get a presidential approval of direct mail.  It's in the Cuban Democracy Act. The President is already authorized to talk about that.  And we may well do that.  And that, in fact, would be the only thing we would have to talk about with the Cuban government, government-to-government

             Q    It's not among the measures, the steps taken today?

             DR. NUCCIO:  It was not in the series of decisions that the President took.  But we don't need a presidential decision on that issue.  It's a part U.S. policy

             Q    When will direct mail begin?

             DR. NUCCIO:  In the past we have raised the direct mail issue.  And the answer of the Cuban government has been, when we establish commercial flights between Cuba and the United States.  We haven't asked that question, and we haven't gotten their answer recently, and so we may ask it and see if there's any different answer. But we have no plans to change air charter relations between the U.S. and Cuba

             Q  -- immigration issue became very strong a few months ago that the United States imposed a lot of restrictions on Cuba.  Then you reached an agreement on immigration with the Cuban government on Guantanamo.  Can I ask you a question?  Are these measures going to be lifted?  Some of them seem to have been lifted today

             DR. NUCCIO:  No, there is -- I want to underline, there is also a mistake in another well-known newspaper.  There are no changes in the remittance policy.  The only adjustment that we have made is to having had a fictitious permission for Cuban American families to go to Cuba -- fictitious because the Treasury Office was literally collapsing with the weight of applications.  Everyone with a doctor's certificate saying that they had a dying family member inside Cuba --it was fictitious -- you had permission to go, but you couldn't get your license until after your family member died and was buried

             So we have allowed people now to go without seeking a prior license.  They can assert they have this emergency, get on the plane once per year.  If they do it more than once a year, they still have to go to through the license procedure.  But we're not going to have dying grandmothers and aunts before people can even get to Cuba, which we thought was a real -- something that the United States government had no business in supervising, frankly.  So that's the only adjustment to the August measures

             Q  So when is this Time Magazine group coming to the White House?

             DR. NUCCIO:  They were here this morning.  They left --or will be leaving for Cuba shortly.  I think they have dinner with President Castro, and then they're on to another country tomorrow.  But I want to underline, this decision was taken completely apart from these decisions today before the President I think even may have seen the memo on this issue.  It's not connected to this; it's all -- I hope the businessmen, acting in a journalistic capacity, will ask some tough questions about what the Cuban government is going to do when the United States takes steps to clearly open up to the Cuban people, if they're going to block that or facilitate it

[deletion]

             MR. MCCURRY:  I need to go back and correct one thing.  I used the term -- having Cuba policy not in my head on a daily basis.  I indicated earlier in this briefing that I would use the term carefully calibrated response.  That's actually a term of our --in the Cuban Democracy Act that refers to the possibility of changes in U.S. policy when we see demonstrated change in Cuba, and I should not have used that in connection with these measures.  These are measures that are adjustments we're making in our own interest because they will strengthen our own enforcement of the act and the embargo, and I should have said this is a disciplined policy decision, but I just wanted to correct that for the record

             Q  Then changes that we made in immigration policy toward Cuba a few months ago seem to have provoked quite a bit of opposition in the Cuban-American community, and now here we go again seemingly stirring up quite a bit of opposition.  Has the White House written off the Cuban American vote in Florida and perhaps in New Jersey?

             MR. MCCURRY:  No, by no means. I think you do an injustice to the Cuban American community by assuming that its opinions are monolithic.  There are different points of view, there are, for all of the reasons we've described here, reasons why many people in the Cuban American community will warmly greet some aspects of this decision.  If you've got a very ill relative in Cuba and you are desperately anxious to visit that relative, you'll be pretty happy about these decisions today

             Taken as a whole, there will be some voices in that community that will no doubt object to these measures; there will also be voices that say this makes some sense.  There will be voices in that very community who will say that this doesn't go far enough.  And I think we believe we are doing the right thing, consistent with our interests, we will certainly make the case as effectively as we can in the Cuban American community, that this is the right thing to do if you believe that there must be peaceful change in Cuba, and the President will be as satisfied and appreciate the support that he will get from whatever segment of that community that wishes to support him

             Q  Mike, on the question of news bureaus, is there a specific criteria that Cuba has to meet that would satisfy a reciprocal arrangement?

             MR. MCCURRY:  It's kind of a know-it-when-we-see-it.  It, frankly, will depend a lot more on your reaction.  As we hear from news organizations that go down and attempt to negotiate and see what type of experience they have in dealing with Cuban authorities, as they attempt to establish a presence there, we will be able to get a better opinion ourselves

             Q  The administration will insist, for example, on certain electronic media, print media, regional, national, a mix --

             MR. MCCURRY:  Well, we would expect to see a good cross-section of news organizations that are allowed access to Cuba for coverage, and treated as our representatives of news organizations from other foreign countries.  It's sort of in a similar fashion.  But as I say, we don't have any strict criteria for that.  We would mostly rely on the impressions we get from executives from your news organizations as they take advantage of the opportunities we hope they will

             Q  Will the White House receive Cuban American groups here to have a dialogue with them, or will Mr. Nuccio have to go back to Miami or New Jersey and do some explaining?

             MR. MCCURRY:  I think it's fair to say that our team has been in close contact with that community; will continue to be.  I believe -- were you there?

             DR. NUCCIO:  I was there three weeks ago, I guess, the last time

             MR. MCCURRY:  He went down three weeks ago, and has been to South Florida on a regular basis

             Q  I mean, after this announcement.  About to stir up hornet's nest

             MR. MCCURRY:  We will be, and there is, both through our NSC folks and through our Office of Public Liaison here an extensive effort to make sure people have the facts about what's been announced. It's easy when we talk about measures about this, they're very often mischaracterized, so we will make sure people know exactly what we have done and what we have not done.  You've already seen some examples of some things that are not necessarily correct that have already been reported, and we are trying to sort out a lot of that now

             Q    Mike, can you give us a quick week ahead?

             MR. MCCURRY:  Yes, I can do that in a minute.  Any more on this subject?

             Q  In what sense does this embargo really need to be tightened, and in what areas do you notice it's leaking since you are going to clamp down --

             MR. MCCURRY:  It's more -- that's an enforcement question. Rick, do you want to take a stab at that?  Let me turn it over to Rick Newcomb

             MR. NEWCOMB:  I think primarily we're looking at -- by rationalizing these areas of travel where travel will now be permitted on a case-by-case license, making the family reunification, humanitarian travel easier, we're able to deploy resources to third country travel, illegal remittances, compliance of the family remittance forward -- travel service providers and financial institutions so that there is, in fact, a tighter enforcement regime

             By having this rationalized consistent with the Cuban Democracy Act, we hope there will be greater community awareness and compliance with the activities that we plan with the Cuban American community

             Q  Mike, would the U.S. okay a visa application from Castro to attend the U.N.?

             MR. MCCURRY:  Well, we would certainly consider, consistent with our obligations as the host nation and, to my knowledge, we have never denied a head of state request connected with an appearance at a U.N. General Assembly session.  Is that correct -- yes

             Q  This Time Magazine group -- who did they see at the White House this morning?

             MR. MCCURRY:  I'd have to check.  Can you check on that and see?  We were trying to set them up with Tony Lake and with Berger and George and a couple of other people.  Panetta was there, Sandy Berger was there, John White was there and Peter Tarnoff from the State Department

             Q  Has Governor Chiles endorsed this?  You've contacted him; is he on board?

             MR. MCCURRY:  I'll have to let the Governor's Office speak for the Governor on that.  But as you can expect, as we have all along, as we've taken steps related to Cuban policy, we've had good and constant contact with the Governor's office

             Q  Mike, this comes just a few days after the Pope asked us to sort of drop the entire embargo.  Is there any relation between one and the other?

             MR. MCCURRY:  No, this has been in the work for a long time.  Richard gave you a good indication of how extensively we have attempted to consult and to develop this, when he indicated just a short while ago that as far back as August, the President authorized members of our foreign policy team to consult with members of Congress on the steps.  So this has been underway for some time

             I think it would be inaccurate to say anything more about the President's visit with the Holy Father other than on the subject of Cuba.  They both shared the same desire, which is a desire for peaceful change in Cuba that can bring greater prosperity, democracy, greater human rights and greater political freedom to the people of Cuba

             Q    Next week

             MR. MCCURRY:  Next week.  Any other subjects we want to do before --

             Q  Did, in fact, the Pope ask the President to stop the trade embargo?

             MR. MCCURRY:  There's nothing -- I was not there and I have to rely on my Deputy's characterization of the meeting, but nothing about what I heard from here, what I've heard from others would indicate that they had any discussion at that level of specificity