Top Official Says U.S. Seeks Cuba's 'liberation'

[donsu]

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGB9NZR2B2E.html


President Bush will be committed during his second term to the "liberation of Cuba" by extending moral and political support to the Cuban people, a top State Department official said Friday.

Roger Noriega, who heads the department's Latin American bureau, also said that once Fidel Castro is no longer in power, the United States is ready to support broad economic and political reform in Cuba "to ensure that vestiges of the regime don't hold on."

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The plan is spelled out in a report released last May and overseen by Secretary of State Colin Powell. The assistance is conditioned on whether Cuba is on a democratic path and whether such assistance is requested.

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With Castro's tumble, Noriega said, the Cuban people had to start thinking about their leader's mortality as well as their own lives.

(is Noriega/smirk threatening the Cuban people?)

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