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US-CUBA: Obama Still
Moving Cautiously Toward Normalisation
By Katie Mattern and Jim Lobe*
WASHINGTON (IPS) - Sunday's announcement by
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Washington
will begin talks with Cuba on bilateral migration
issues and resume direct postal service between the
two countries suggests the new administration of
President Barack Obama intends to proceed cautiously
toward normalising ties with the Caribbean nation,
according to veteran experts here.
The announcement, which Clinton made while visiting
El Salvador for Monday's inauguration of its new
president, Mauricio Funes, came on the eve of the
annual General Assembly of the Organisation of
American States (OAS) in Honduras, where Cuba's
proposed re-admission to the hemispheric body is
likely to dominate the proceedings.
It also came six weeks after Obama lifted all
restrictions on Cuban Americans to visit their
homeland and send money to family members in what
was regarded as the first major step toward the new
president's campaign promise to engage Havana.
"We've made more progress in four months than has
been made in a number of years," Clinton bragged to
reporters in San Salvador Sunday. "We need to work
together to continue that kind of progress, keeping
in mind the legitimate aspirations and human rights
of the people in Cuba."
But analysts here said the resumption of migration
talks, which had been suspended under former
President George W. Bush in 2003, was the least that
Obama could do, particularly after his speech last
month at the Summit of the Americas where he cited
immigration explicitly as one of the key issues on
which he was prepared to engage.
"He should've started these talks the day after his
inauguration," said Wayne Smith, former head of the
U.S. Interests Section in Havana who has long worked
to normalise ties between the two nations as a
fellow at the Centre for International Policy (CIP)
here.
"They still need to remove the restrictions on
academic and scientific exchanges and
people-to-people programmes and issue visas to
Cubans so they can come here for academic
conferences and the like; it seems like they haven't
even thought of that yet," he noted.
Smith added, however, that the resumption of the
immigration talks, as well an apparent agreement to
also address drug interdiction and hurricane relief
efforts on a more formal basis than before, showed
that the new administration was "at least moving".
William LeoGrande, a Cuba expert at American
University, echoed Smith's analysis, noting as well
that the decision to restore direct postal service
was a "logical follow-on" to Obama's decision to end
restrictions on Cuban-American travel and
remittances to their homeland.
But he said the latest announcement showed that
Obama wanted to move cautiously on Cuba and
suggested that the fact it occurred just before the
OAS meeting was not coincidental.
"Just as they relaxed the restrictions on Cuban
Americans just before the Summit of the Americas,
now they are offering migration talks just before
the OAS meeting," he said. "It seems clear that
they're trying to inoculate themselves from
criticism by Latin Americans about Cuba policy and
at the same time avoid picking political fights with
(anti-Castro) forces at home. It's calculated."
How much the new measures will provoke opposition
remains to be seen, but they did succeed in gaining
the endorsement of one key group, the Cuban American
National Foundation (CANF).
"This is a very positive development and something
that our organisation has recommended," said
Francisco Hernandez, CANF's president.
The latest exchanges between Havana and Washington
were initiated May 22, when the State Department
delivered a diplomatic note to the Cuban Interests
Section here asking to resume migration talks.
Washington received a positive reply Saturday,
according to a senior State Department official.
In their reply, the Cubans said they were also
willing to engage in talks with Washington regarding
counter-terrorism, drug trafficking, hurricane
relief, and direct postal service. Clinton said
Sunday she was "very pleased" with the response.
Clinton was in San Salvador as part of a three-day
swing through the region beginning with Funes's
inauguration Monday and culminating in the first day
of annual OAS meeting Tuesday in San Pedro Sula,
Honduras.
The re-admission of Cuba into the hemispheric body
will almost certainly be the most controversial
issue at the OAS meeting. Significantly, as one of
his first acts as president, Funes, the leader of
the left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation
Front (FMLN), a former guerrilla group, is expected
to announce the normalisation of relations between
El Salvador and Cuba, leaving the U.S. as the only
nation in the hemisphere without full diplomatic
ties with Havana.
Largely at Washington's behest, the OAS suspended
Cuba's membership in the OAS in 1962, one year after
the Central Intelligence Agency's disastrous Bay of
Pigs invasion and a month before Washington imposed
its trade embargo against the island.
Virtually all of Latin America's leaders, including
OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza, have
called for Havana to be re-instated as a full
member, despite the fact that the government of
President Raul Castro has denied any interest in
rejoining an organisation that it calls "that
decrepit old house of Washington."
The OAS headquarters, built by Andrew Carnegie, is
located just off the Ellipse within shouting
distance of the White House.
The Obama administration has said it is willing to
end Cuba's suspension but that its formal
re-admission should be conditioned on Havana's
implementing political reforms that meet the
requirements of the Inter-American Democratic
Charter. Last week, the OAS permanent council formed
a small working group to come up with a compromise
that most observers here believe will result in
lifting the suspension and beginning talks with
Havana over the terms of its re-admission.
"None of the parties involved oppose ending Cuba's
suspension, and so the issue is, will Cuba want to
re-join the OAS and what kind of discussion needs to
happen to make that possible," said Geoff Thale, a
Cuba specialist at the Washington Office on Latin
America (WOLA).
Anti-Castro forces here are mobilising against
re-admission. "The U.S. position has been firmly
rooted in the promotion of freedom and democracy for
the Cuban nation," said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen,
the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs
Committee whose district includes "Little Havana" in
Miami.
"We have clearly said that Cuba should not
participate in regional groups until there is a
freely elected, fully participatory, democratic
government in power in Cuba," she said.
But Thale said efforts by Washington to insist on
major democratic reforms in Cuba risked harming its
relations with other, more important Latin American
countries.
"This issue is a litmus test for virtually the
entire continent," said Thale. "Everyone else has
decided that the way to deal with the issue is to
engage in diplomatic relations, and it doesn't
behoove us to threaten the only regional
organisation of which we're a member."
*Jim Lobe's blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read
at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/. |
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