President Obama altered the nation's Cuba policy on Monday, lifting restrictions on Cuban-Americans to visit their relatives on the island and send them financial assistance.
"There are no better ambassadors for freedom than Cuban-Americans," said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.
The announcement fulfills an Obama campaign promise, and comes less than a week before he attends a summit with Latin American leaders; many of those leaders have urged the U.S. to moderate its stance towards the communist government of Cuba.
The adminstration is also allowing telecommunications companies to seek cellphone and television services linking Cuba and the United States, according to Obama's order.
Obama did not end the economic embargo against Cuba that has been in effect since 1962, a year after the U.S. cut off diplomatic relations with Fidel Castro's communist regime. Ending the embargo requires approval by Congress.
Cuba is a challenging political issue for any president, thanks largely to the active Cuban-American community in South Florida.
"He's got to deal with the Cubans in Miami and the Cubans in Havana," said Peter Hakim, director of the Inter-American Dialogue, a bi-partisan policy center in Washington, D.C. "This is really a very charged political issue."
U.S. Reps. Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart — Cuban-American brothers — denounced Obama's "unilateral concessions." The House Republicans said easing travel and money restrictions will provide "the dictatorship with critical financial support."
The government — now run by Fidel's brother Raul Castro — will be emboldened to "further isolate, imprison, and brutalize pro-democracy activists," the Diaz-Balart brothers said in a statement.
But another Republican conservative — Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona — praised Obama's action. "One would expect the Cuban government to tell its citizens where they can and can't travel, but for our government to impose similar restrictions has never made sense," Flake said.
Flake called on Congress to lift travel restrictions to Cuba for all Americans.
Dan Restrepo, an Obama adviser on Latin American issues, called the moves "a reaching out to the Cuban people."
"It's very important to help open up space so the Cuban people can work on the, kind of, grassroots democracy that is necessary to move Cuba to a better future," said Restrepo, a special assistant to the president and a senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council.
Frank Calzon, executive director of the Washington-based Center for a Free Cuba, was not surprised by the announcement since Obama had promised to remove the restrictions on the campaign trail nearly a year ago. But Calzon hopes it's as far as Obama goes.
"We believe he'll be true to his other promise during the campaign that he will keep the embargo in place until political prisoners are released and political and economic reforms take place," Calzon said. "That's what the president has said and we believe that he will be true to his word."
President Kennedy enacted a travel ban to Cuba in 1963, a policy that has loosened and tighetened over the years.
Obama's announcememt lifted travel and remittance restrictions put in place by President George W. Bush. His policy limited travel to Cuba to two weeks every three years, and restricted that travel to only immediate family members.
The new rules also expand the items that can be sent to Cuba, such as clothing, personal hygiene and fishing equipment. It still prohibits sending items to senior government officials and Communist Party members.
Three members of Congress recently traveled to Cuba and met with both Fidel and Raul Castro, who began running the government after his brother fell ill in 2006. The delegation consisted of members of the Congressional Black Caucus: Rep. Barbara Lee of California, Laura Richardson of California, and Bobby Rush of Illinois, all Democrats.
Cuba figures to be a major topic at this weekend's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a fierce critic of the United States, has tried to use the Cuban issue to separate the United States and Latin America. Chavez has protested the fact that Cuba has not been invited to the Summit of the Americas.
Even Latin allies such as Brazil have argued that the U.S. anti-communist policty is isolating the United States in Latin American, said analyst Julia Sweig, and these "tentative" steps are unlikely to impress members of the Summit of the Americas.
"It's going to be seen as a very limited step," said Sweig, director of Latin Studies with the Council on Foreign Relations.
Hakim pointed out that "every Latin America national has normal political and economic relations with Cuba."
Any attempts to expand cellphone, computer, or broadcast communications between Cuba and the United States faces a major challenge from the Cuban government.
"You will still have the problem of jamming," said Johanna Mendelson Forman, a Cuba specalist with the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has opposed the Cuban embargo, released a statement of approval at the president's action.
"We are very encouraged by the initial steps taken by the administration to make it easier for family members to travel to Cuba and to send more types of humanitarian aid to the island," said Myron Brilliant, the chamber's senior vice president for international affairs.
"The last 50 years of our embargo against Cuba have proven that unilateral sanctions do not work. Rather than encouraging Cuba to democratize, the embargo actually helped prop up a Communist regime," Brilliant said.
Contributing: Alan Gomez in McLean, Va.
See also:
The NY Times - White House Fact Sheet on Cuba
No comments:
Post a Comment