WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. Jesse Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged President Clinton to approve CNN's application to open a news bureau in Cuba. He said the move would hasten the demise of President Fidel Castro's government.
In a letter sent Thursday to Clinton, Helms said he supported the proposal provided the ``opening is completely unconditional and that the Castro regime will be granted no quid pro quo.''
Helms, R-N.C., also said all U.S. news organizations that make similar applications should be permitted to establish a presence in Cuba.
``I am persuaded that the spotlight of a free press focused on Castro's tropical gulag will only hasten the day when the Cuban people are free of his brutal communist tyranny,'' Helms said in the letter.
He said U.S. news bureaus would benefit the Cuban people by making news organizations less dependent on Castro's government ``for access to the island and thus allowing better reporting on the true conditions in Cuba.''
``If Castro wants to open Cuba to the roving eye of the American news media, we should by all means give him the rope with which to hang himself,'' Helms said.
He said approval of the CNN bid was consistent with the Helms-Burton law he wrote restricting business deals with Cuba only if there was exchange of news bureaus by the two countries.
He said Helms-Burton requires that before the Cuban government is permitted to establish any media operation in the United States, Cuba must grant the same rights to Radio Marti and TV Marti.
Radio Marti and TV Marti are two U.S government outlets that beam Spanish programs to Cuba from Miami.
Among other news organizations negotiating to open news bureaus in Cuba is The Associated Press, which was the last American news outlet in Cuba. The AP was expelled from Cuba in 1969 as part of a general radicalization of Castro's revolution.
AP-NY-02-06-97 1657EST
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