From Washington Straight

Heavy guns in the Administration are being brought to bear on Democratic Representatives Edwin Boland (Mass.) and B. F. Sisk (Cal.) to soften what threatens to be a tough stand toward trade with the Soviet Union and the satellites by Rep. Paul Kitchen’s Select Committee on Export Controls. Kitchen, a hardline anti-Communist, and Republicans Delbert Latta and Glen Lipscomb, favor adoption of a report which will recommend a near-absolute embargo on trade with the Sino-Soviet bloc. But Boland and Sisk haven’t declared themselves as yet.

Lipscomb last week disclosed to the House that the United States has—in effect—been paying for Soviet jeeps and heavy duty trucks to be used by Communist Cuba. The way this Rube-Goldbergish situation came about is this: The World Health Organization and its regional representative, the Pan American Health Organization, have supplied Castro Cuba with 16 two-ton heavy duty Russian trucks and 32 four-wheel-drive Russian jeeps under WHO’s Malaria Eradication Special Account, for which the U.S. foots 90 per cent of the bill. To add icing to the cake: Soviet Russia refused to make the jeeps and trucks available to WHO unless WHO could guarantee that the vehicles would go to Cuba and no other country. In addition, it was specified that the jeeps, which one would have thought would be equipped to carry anti-malarial spraying equipment, should be used to carry “supervisory” personnel (and just possibly, a couple of Fidelista militiamen).

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Heavy guns in the Administration are being brought to bear on Democratic Representatives Edwin Boland (Mass.) and B. F. Sisk (Cal.) to soften what threatens to be a tough stand toward trade with the Soviet Union and the satellites by Rep. Paul Kitchen’s Select Committee on Export Controls. Kitchen, a hardline anti-Communist, and Republicans Delbert Latta and Glen Lipscomb, favor adoption of a report which will recommend a near-absolute embargo on trade with the Sino-Soviet bloc. But Boland and Sisk haven’t declared themselves as yet.

Lipscomb last week disclosed to the House that the United States has—in effect—been paying for Soviet jeeps and heavy duty trucks to be used by Communist Cuba. The way this Rube-Goldbergish situation came about is this: The World Health Organization and its regional representative, the Pan American Health Organization, have supplied Castro Cuba with 16 two-ton heavy duty Russian trucks and 32 four-wheel-drive Russian jeeps under WHO’s Malaria Eradication Special Account, for which the U.S. foots 90 per cent of the bill. To add icing to the cake: Soviet Russia refused to make the jeeps and trucks available to WHO unless WHO could guarantee that the vehicles would go to Cuba and no other country. In addition, it was specified that the jeeps, which one would have thought would be equipped to carry anti-malarial spraying equipment, should be used to carry “supervisory” personnel (and just possibly, a couple of Fidelista militiamen).