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Helms-Burton legislation is a great advance for human rights of innocent victims of state robbery. It is sorely needed in Eastern Europe as well. I have sent the following to the New York Times, in response to their article on June 9th on NATO expansion. You may find the sections on European hypocricy interesting. It is sad that Canada, which has made so much progress in compensating its own Indians and generally stands for what is right, in the case of victims of state robbery from Cuba has taken the immoral side -- the side of big business that wants to make money of off assets stolen from completely innocent people by a ruthless communist dictatorship and currently being administered by Castro & co. ------------------------------------ to the NYTimes: Thomas L. Friedman s article advising against the expansion of NATO reaches the correct conclusion but misses very important reasons why East European countries should not be admitted to NATO at this time. They simply are not ready and do not qualify. I think that Mr. Friedman should do more research among those whom he calls "ethnic voters in Ohio" to find out whether those who fled from Communism and came to this country are as enamored as he feels of the postCommunist regimes. Some partial answers are provided in your feature on the sad situation of the victims of Nazi and Communist thefts, in the Business section of May 26th. Many "ethnic voters in Ohio" and elsewhere are not at all charmed by all those ex-Communists. I feel that East European countries would be best helped by first having to meet rigorous standards of civilized behavior and then being invited to join the EU or NATO. They are far from meeting such standards now. To ignore these unpleasant realities will only discourage the ex-Communists from mending their ways. If the Central European countries get admitted into NATO with their present policies, which often flout their own constitutions and international human rights conventions, then this will lead to the demise of NATO. It will also ultimately lead to DESTABILIZATION in Central Europe. While the post-Communist governments do not meet standards of civilised behavior, they SHOULD NOT be admitted. The particular country I have in mind is the Czech Republic. There, the authorities have pulled off a charade, worthy of Kafka: a human-rights activist president (Havel) and a "right-wing" (self-proclaimed to be so) prime minister (Klaus) effectively cover up policies on the ground that nearly opposite to what they say. For instance, bureaucracy is far worse than under communism, but Klaus gives speeches on "freedom." Rent control and complete impossibility to ever terminate housing leases (they are inheritable and transferable without landlord permission etc.) continues to expropriate owners -- and housing construction has collapsed as a result, completely, while Klaus gets one prize after another from American conservative think tanks, for being a genius economist. 1/3 of the economy, which would normally provide housing services to an underhoused population, is messed up in ways you cannot begin to understand unless you live there for a while. The worst example, however, is the Czech government s advertisement of return of property to the rightful owners -- while at the same time the actual policies on the ground are completely different. This is a country that used to be rather wealthy and has lots of industrial assets pre-dating WWII and even WWI... As little as possible is being returned to the victims of Communist and Nazi thefts because the ex-Communist nomenclatura does not want to give up control. And NOTHING at all is being returned to US citizens, for example, as you can verify from Ambassador