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Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company The New York Times July 27, 2000, Thursday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section A; Page 21; Column 1; National Desk LENGTH: 411 words HEADLINE: THE 2000 CAMPAIGN: THE RECORD; Over the Years, Cheney Opposed U.S. Sanctions BYLINE: By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS DATELINE: WASHINGTON, July 26 BODY: During his early years as a White House official and member of the House, Dick Cheney, the expected Republican vice presidential candidate, consistently opposed unilateral American sanctions against nations including Iran, Cuba and South Africa. More recently, as the chief executive of the Halliburton Company, an energy services company that is in the top 100 American concerns in revenues, Mr. Cheney became a lobbyist for lifting most sanctions. Referring to "my favorite hobbyhorse, the question of unilateral sanctions," he argued in a 1998 speech that "they almost never work." "It is very hard to find specific examples where they actually achieve a policy objective," he said. As a new official in the Ford White House in 1974, Mr. Cheney saw the United States government, under pressure from Congress, impose sanctions against Turkey over the Cyprus issue. The action came not because it made sense from a policy standpoint, Mr. Cheney said, but "because the Greek-American lobby was significantly bigger and more effective" than its Turkish-American counterpart. A decade later while serving in the House, Mr. Cheney twice voted to oppose sanctions against the apartheid government of South Africa. In the 1990's, as Congress moved twice to increase sanctions against Cuba, Mr. Cheney said, he would have preferred setting up a West Berlin-type enclave of democracy and free enterprise at the United States naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But Mr. Cheney did back the multilateral sanctions against Iraq after the Persian Gulf war, aimed at curbing its production of weapons of mass destruction. After he became chief executive of Halliburton, Mr. Cheney joined members of the United States Chamber of Commerce and pro-trade groups under the rubric of USA-Engage. The lobby led a failing effort to block the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act, which bars American investment in those oil-rich countries. Halliburton is also a member of the board of the National Foreign Trade Council, a lobbying group that recently won a victory in the Supreme Court, which struck down a Massachusetts state law imposing state-level sanctions on companies doing business in Myanmar, formerly Burma. Mr. Cheney's company has already done business in countries still facing American sanctions, including Libya and Iraq, the enemy Mr. Cheney helped vanquish in the gulf war. "Our government has become sanctions-happy," Mr. Cheney said in his 1998 speech. http://www.nytimes.com LANGUAGE: ENGLISH LOAD-DATE: July 27, 2000 ----------------------------------------------- FREE! The World's Best Email Address @email.com Reserve your name now at http://www.email.com -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a discussion list run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq For removal from list, email soc-casi-discuss-request@lists.cam.ac.uk Full details of CASI's various lists can be found on the CASI website: http://welcome.to/casi