Cuba's Raul Castro open to meet Obama: report - Reuters/The Nation

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

Hopefully, we'll also see a "change" in Obama's policy on the failed embargo.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081126/pl_nm/us_cuba_usa_obama_1


HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuban President Raul Castro is open to meeting U.S. President-elect Barack Obama on neutral ground to try to resolve the island's four-decade-old feud with Washington, according to an interview with a U.S. magazine.

The interview for The Nation was conducted by U.S. actor Sean Penn, who traveled to Havana after meeting Cuban ally Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and before Obama won the U.S. presidential election on November 4.

Obama has said he will reverse the Bush administration's policies that restricted Cuban Americans visiting Cuba and sending cash to their families there. He is willing to talk to Castro but would keep the 46-year-old trade embargo as leverage to influence democratic changes in the one-party state.

"Perhaps we could meet at Guantanamo," Castro says, referring to the bay where the U.S. maintains a naval base, which Cuba considers a violation of its sovereignty.

"We must meet and begin to solve our problems, and at the end of the meeting, we could give the president a gift ... we could send him home with the American flag that waves over Guantanamo Bay."

[DesertFlower]

1. i resent the fact that i am not

allowed to travel to cuba.

[dkofos]

2. I sure hope Obama drops the failed embargo on Cuba.

What a monumental waste.

[ben_meyers]

3. How has the embargo failed?

It seems to me that it has protected Cuba from becoming ravaged by capitalism so that it could become the thriving workers paradise that it is today. It has also allowed the Castros to remain in power and nurture that wonderful society by giving them someone else to blame for whatever minor problems they may have had.