Cuba policy experts say US should engage Cuba

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Cuba policy experts say US should engage Cuba
By ANITA SNOW – 38 minutes ago

HAVANA (AP) — Several U.S. experts on policy toward Cuba said Monday that President-elect Barack Obama should make the first move to engage with the communist government and not wait for the island to release political prisoners or meet other conditions.

Speaking in a teleconference arranged by the Center for Democracy in the Americas, the Cuba specialists said negotiations on prisoner releases or other issues can follow an initial meeting.

The independent Washington-based center has repeatedly urged an end to U.S. sanctions and restrictions on Cuba.

The policy experts also said small U.S. steps now toward lifting restrictions could ease open Cuban society and polish America's tarnished image in Latin America.

Cuban officials' "desire for engagement is there and has been signaled repeatedly," said Jake Colvin, a vice president for global trade issues at the National Foreign Trade Council, a business group that opposes unilateral U.S. trade restrictions against other countries. "The engagement comes first and the negotiation comes later. I think we can talk without preconditions."



Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iAmsicW8N2RLyDMGseghZNrEpiNgD95LR33O0

[Judi Lynn]

1. Key West sending convoy to Cuba?

Monday, Jan. 12, 2009
Key West sending convoy to Cuba?

Key West Mayor Morgan McPherson says the time is right to extend an olive branch to Cuba, and says he’s working with people in Key West who are close to president-elect Barack Obama to see if representatives from Key West can’t make an olive-branch-carrying trip to Havana this spring.

“I want to establish a diplomatic convoy to go over,” McPherson told the Keynoter on Friday, describing that convoy as a mix of city officials, community leaders and other residents.

“It’s a new day,” said McPherson, adding that although he doesn’t share many of Obama’s political beliefs, he is in sympathy with the position on Cuba that the soon-to-be president voiced on the campaign trail.

~snip~
McPherson says he first began talking to people in Key West about going to Cuba at the time of the hurricanes in the late summer and fall. The Keys were spared in the 2008 hurricane season, while some of the storms traveled over the spine of Cuba, causing massive destruction.

“We should have been the individuals ready to send them aid,” says McPherson, noting that he tried to “get some movement through Bush” but was unsuccessful.

McPherson says he’s been working on the plan for a convoy to Cuba with residents of Key West who enjoy a friendship with the Obamas. But he declined to share names of those involved, calling them “very private” people.

More:
http://www.bradenton.com/331/story/1145595.html

[Mika]

3. When Katrina hit Cuba offered to send the Henry Reeves Brigade (1600 Drs) for emergency relief.

When Cuba was ravaged by 3 serious hurricanes last year the US gov offered $100,000 dollars in aid.


Cuba has been extending the olive branch for decades.


Click here for info on Cuba's Henry Reeves Brigade

[Bacchus39]

4. it was $5 million and they refused

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/09/15/cuba.us/index.html

[Mika]

6. Yeah. Weeks after the embarrassing offer of 100 grand.

Check my links.

Cuba doesn't want US aid. All they seek is simply a level playing field of trade and commerce.

End the sanctions now!

[Bacchus39]

8. they wanted the US to give them "credit" though

and the US doesn't need Cuban aid. The offer of doctors was a propaganda stunt.

I imagine the $100,000 was from the US interests section. funding over this amount has to be approved above the embassy level.

[Mika]

9. That would be the level playing field.

As it is now, Cuba has to pay cash - in advance - prior to any purchase. No other nation that trades w/the US has to trade like that.

Its punitive and unfair, especially considering that the US is a debtor nation itself.

---

I just can't believe that you are saying that the US didn't need this critical help when people were dying in N.O.L.A.! The offer from Cuba was within days of the disaster, while citizens were floundering and suffering with little help. W needed a DVD of the suffering to get half a clue, and that didn't help motivate him to act.

And I thought _Bush was a revisionist.

:puke:

[Kaleko]

2. Start talking with everyone as if they were responsible adults?

How radical!!!

[struggle4progress]

5. Group urges early Obama easing of Cuba sanctions

By Doug Palmer
January 12, 2009

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama should reinvigorate U.S. trade ties in Latin America and the Caribbean during his first 90 days in office by softening the most punitive sanctions on Cuba, a leading business group said on Monday.

"That could have an electrifying effect in terms of hemispheric atmosphere," Eric Farnsworth, vice president at the Council of the Americas, said at a briefing on the group's recommendations for U.S. trade policy in the region.

The report urged Obama to ease restrictions on visiting and sending money to Cuba, as well as cultural and other exchanges, before regional leaders hold a Summit of the Americas meeting in Port of Spain, Trinidad on April 17-19.

Obama has pledged to soften restrictions on family travel and remittances but said he would keep the four-decade-old embargo as leverage ...

http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2009/01/12/group_urges_early_obama_easing_of_cuba_sanctions/

[Mika]

7. Misleading headline. The entire spectrum of sanctions should be killed off.

What did Cuba do to the US?

I'm incensed that so many suggest that the US should create a "special" class of US citizen/resident - by allowing only Cuban-Americans and Cuban resident aliens to travel to Cuba and remit money. It is a violation of our constitutional right to unfettered travel AND equal protection under the law.

Mr Obama's suggestion is that only Cuban-Americans and Cubans be allowed their FULL rights to travel the world, including Cuba, while the rest of us remain travel banned.

:wtf:

[flamingdem]

10. I agree. Here is an article from Counterpunch that will convince others of same

http://www.counterpunch.org/sandels01132009.html

EXCERPT:

Subversion Through Trade?
Cuba and the Obama Administration

By ROBERT SANDELS

The incoming Obama administration is being bombarded with suggestions on how to deal with Cuba. In the main, they favor relaxing or ending the blockade (embargo) and travel ban. The principal argument is that trade and diplomatic relations will nudge Cuba toward democratic capitalism, a policy adjustment that differs from the current regime-change strategy mainly in its tactical considerations.

The recommendations are being advanced while both the incoming and outgoing administrations in Washington are abandoning all but the pretense of a competitive free market. Through policy inertia, it seems, memos keep going out to other countries urging them to stick resolutely to the free-market model.

A recent report from the Partnership for the Americas Commission of the Washington-based think tank the Brookings Institution proposes a broad range of generally positive reform initiatives for Latin America and Caribbean policies in such areas as environment, energy, migration, and international cooperation.<1>

The advice on Cuba, nevertheless, follows the pattern set earlier this year by the Council on Foreign Relations, which repackaged President George W. Bush's Cuba overthrow policy and placed it back on the shelf as "A New Direction for a New Reality."<2>

The Brookings recommendations, among others, propose a soft version of traditional US hegemony tactics in the guise of democracy promotion. Democracy promotion as a policy tool has been strengthened during the Bush years most notably at the 2001 Quebec Summit of the Americas where Bush insisted on a declaration making democracy inseparable from a market economy.<3>

Linking the two in this way allows overthrow advocates to skip lightly over the part about destroying economies and undermining governments and to justify economic warfare by insisting that sanctions help populations in target countries achieve democracy.