On the Record Briefing: The Grant to the Sabre Foundation

Thank you all. (Applause.)

Assistant Secretary Craner: Thank you and good morning. Thanks to all of you for coming today, and especially to you, Secretary Martinez, for being here. We appreciate that.

This is the first day of Human Rights Week, and we look at Human Rights Week as a time to rededicate ourselves to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights standards and norms, and to remember those around the world who are struggling for liberty. For us in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, this is a time when we take stock of our efforts, to extend protection for human rights in corners of the globe. I've just returned from Colombia, traveling with Secretary of State Powell, where the subject of human rights was a high priority. I also spent a week recently in Central Asia, an area of great concern for human rights. The Middle East, of course, is a new frontier, and my bureau is increasing its involvement in this strategically vital area of the world. Later this week we'll release two pamphlets detailing human rights issues in Iraq and Zimbabwe. And on Friday, I depart for China as head of the delegation to conduct our human rights dialogue.

But today, we are here to talk about a nation in our own hemisphere. Cuba is a place where the human rights are violated every day, and people still await democracy. I want to say this right up front: At its core, human rights is about human beings. We sometimes get caught up in statistics or stereotypes, but in my bureau we speak of human rights, we speak of people -- a man, a woman, a child, with his or her own fears and needs.

One of the ways that an individual is most enriched and most empowered is through knowledge. Access to knowledge is a keystone of a free society, and it is through knowledge and civic discourse that we understand our fundamental rights and liberties and our responsibilities as citizens. It is through knowledge that we learn to treasure the diversity and richness of our cultural heritage and to understand the value and the contributions and the heritage of others.

With the growing globalization of knowledge fueled by the technology of the Internet, we can now offer the hand of friendship to neighbors we've never met, even those who live under the weight of a undemocratic regime. In this spirit, the Department of State and the Sabre Foundation are joining hands to initiate a pilot program to collect and distribute Spanish-language books to Cuban children.

Sabre has developed a website where anyone can go to select a book and donate funds to send this gift of knowledge to the children of Cuba. These books will be available free of charge to any Cuban citizen at the US Interests Section in Havana. We hope these books will encourage a love of learning, and sharing of our American experience and ideals, supporting our government's commitment to building democracy in our hemisphere and throughout the world, one child at a time.

This is the season in which many of us pause to recognize and treasure our own freedoms and our own abundant blessings, including the priceless gift of friends and family. And on Human Rights Day, as we celebrate the progress of democracy and freedoms, we confront the challenges that remain. We look also to the promise that an initiative like this, like the Cuba Book initiative can create. This is a chance to establish links between individuals in two countries and promote the kind of people-to-people ties that President Bush has long supported.

I would now like to introduce Curt Struble, the Acting Assistant Secretary.

Mr. Struble: Secretary Martinez, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your presence today.

President Bush announced a new initiative, an initiative for a new Cuba on May 20 of this year. It was quite a revolutionary announcement in that it provided for a more flexible policy approach to Cuba. If before US policy centered on the requirement that Cuba become a fully democratic, human rights-respecting nation before the United States would lift the trade and travel restrictions, and establish full diplomatic relations, under the new policy announced by the President we will continue to advocate a rapid and peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba, but the President has announced a flexible responsive campaign that recognizes that freedom sometimes grows step by step. The US would match Cuban Government actions in the area of free and fair elections and make market reforms by working with our Congress to ease the trade and travel restrictions. Well, those restrictions have been widely discussed recently.

Today, what we are doing is celebrating another aspect of President Bush's policy toward Cuba and that are efforts to make life better for a Cuban people. We hope that these books will make life a little richer for children, Cuban children and their families. We hope that they will give Cubans what they give our own children: a window to limitless worlds, a view of others lives and dreams, a respect for the opinions of others, the ability to think creatively and freely, and an incentive for free expression, exposure to the richness of diverse societies.

And like Lorne Craner, I would like to ask that you consider donating to the Sabre Foundation to advance this project. And now it's my pleasure to introduce Tania Vitvitsky, who is the Executive Director of the Sabre Foundation, and she is going to show us how to access the website where such donations can be made.

Ms. Vitvitsky: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. My name is Tania Vitvitsky and I'm the Executive Director of Sabre Foundation. Just to put things in a little bit of context, Sabre Foundation has been around since 1969, and when the book project first started in 1986, since that time we have distributed over 5 million new books to people in over 70 countries, including countries in the former Soviet Union, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Central Asia, North Africa and several countries, one or two countries, in the Middle East.

We have recently, over the past several years, been receiving beautiful Spanish-language books from major American publishers, and, as a result, we have been able to provide new Spanish-language books to Spanish-speaking countries. So, in this year alone, we have sent books to Ecuador in support of Peace Corps projects there and to the Dominican Republic.

And now we are working on sending these lovely books to Cuban children and that is why we have set up this website. And this is not a live connection, by the way. Because if you have a live connection it inevitably never works, so this is just a mock-up on a CD-ROM. It's a simple site. We have sample books there. You can see some of those books displayed around you, and photographs taken in Havana a couple of years ago.

This site needs to be promoted. It can't just sit there or else, you know, nobody will know it's around. And we hope to do a number of publicity events and activities that, you know, we're kind of planning, that are in the works. And it's really -- and there is a Spanish language version forthcoming so you'll be able to toggle between Spanish and English.

(Points to the web site projected on screen.) So, basically, it presents sort of a rationale, people-to-people rationale for doing, I think, a nice thing. And if somebody comes on the site, and they just take a look at this, they want to give a donation, say anywhere from $10 and more. Oops, uh-oh, here we go again. Sorry. It's looking for the Internet and it's not going to find it. Uh-oh. Bear with me for the moment. Okay, here we go.

So, basically, this is the first page. This is what you'll see when you log onto www.sabre.org\cuba. So here's the rationale, the kinds of books that we'll be sending, the themes of the books that we'll be sending, and then if somebody wants to make an online donation they go into this page, select the level of support that they want to provide. And then I'm not going to click "Continue" because then it will keep looking for the Internet. But then they get -- they fill out their name and address, their credit card and they get an automatic response and a very nice letter thanking them for their donation. If somebody wants to just contact us and they don't want to make an online donation, they certainly know where and how to reach us.

So we hope that donations through this source, through the Internet, through the web, will help us continue the program beyond this year. So anything that anybody can do to spread the word that this is available would be very much appreciated. Thank you.

Ms. Cassel: Our guests are available for questions, for anyone who has a question.

Question: I'm the Director of the Cuban-American National Council D.C. Office, and my question has to do with the distribution process once the books are in Cuba. Have we thought about what to do in the case of confiscation by the government once it's in the hands of the Cuban people?

Mr. Struble: Dan, do you or Kevin want to talk about the mechanics of the distribution in Havana?

This is Dan Fisk, the Deputy Assistant Secretary.

Mr. Fisk: Thank you. That's a very, very important and valid question. First of all, the main distribution point for this is through the US Interests Section. And what we try to do through, with our other book distribution programs that we have is members of the Interests Section will go out and attempt to monitor and verify delivery.

So what we promote most of all, though, is that the Cubans themselves take responsibility for -- the Cuban citizens take responsibility for the further distribution of the book once it gets out of the Interests Section. That's something, as I said, we will work with the Sabre Foundation and the Interests Section to make sure that these get as wide distribution as possible throughout the island.

Question: Has the Cuban Government been consulted about this? Do they have an agreement with them for these? Do they approve the kind of books that are given in Cuba, or no?

Mr. Fisk: I'm sorry?

Question: Has the Cuban Government been consulted about this? Do they have to approve the kind of books you give over there?

Mr. Fisk: We have not consulted with the Cuban Government. It's our view that, first of all, these are children's books. They're books that are available around the world already. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides the ability of all citizens to have access to free ideas. We think that that's what this represents. I can't imagine that Corduroy or Where's My Panda or Where's the Panda would offend any government, and, in fact, we think this is just consistent with our obligation as a member of the international community of the free flow of ideas. In this case, though, we want to make sure that we get the best books we can, the best children's books we can, to Cuban children.

Any more? No?

Thank you all very much for coming today.