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Senior U.S. Republican urges rethink of Cuba policy
Reuters - Tuesday, February 24
By Susan Cornwell
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WASHINGTON - The United States should rethink its decades-old policy of isolating Cuba, a key Senate Republican said on Monday, encouraging President Barack Obama's administration to move ahead with a promised review.
Indiana Senator Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the U.S. policy of shunning Havana had failed in its stated purpose of bringing democracy to the Cuban people.
"We must recognise the ineffectiveness of our current policy and deal with the Cuban regime in a way that enhances U.S. interests," Lugar said in the introduction to a report written by staff who work for the committee's Republicans.
The report stopped short of recommending an end to the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, but called for "seizing the initiative" by attempting gradual engagement with Cuba while the Obama administration is still new.
Obama has made clear he favours relaxing restrictions on family travel and cash remittances by Cuban Americans to Cuba, although he has said the embargo should stay in place to press for democratic reforms.
The president is grappling with the global economic crisis and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but Lugar's comments will remind him of growing calls on Capitol Hill for easing trade and travel restrictions on Cuba.
Last year, nearly one-fourth of Congress wrote to the administration of George W. Bush urging a review of Cuba policy after Fidel Castro, who seized power in a 1959 revolution, retired due to poor health.
Bush, who had tightened the U.S. embargo, rejected a change in policy without a transition to democracy in Cuba and there remain some strong defenders of existing policy on Capitol Hill as well.
Obama has expressed an openness to meet Cuban President Raul Castro, who took over when his brother Fidel Castro stepped aside last year.
SOFTER POLICY
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last month the Obama administration wants to lift travel restrictions on families wishing to visit relatives in Cuba, and planned a review of Cuba policy.
Lugar was a foreign policy mentor to Obama when the president was a senator, and Obama sometimes consulted him for foreign policy advice during the presidential campaign.
At Lugar's direction, senior Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffers travelled to Cuba last month, a little over a week before Obama was sworn into office as president.
Their report, released on Monday, advocated gradual change. As initial unilateral steps, it proposed repealing all restrictions on Cuban-American family travel and remittances before mid-April and possibly lifting all travel restrictions.
"Beyond these immediate unilateral measures, the timing of policy reforms and elimination of embargo restrictions would depend on the evolution of negotiations," it said.
Other steps that should be considered include discussions with Cuba on drug interdiction and migration, and letting Cuba buy U.S. agricultural products on credit, the report said.
Washington broke off diplomatic relations with Havana in 1961, two years after Fidel Castro seized power, and Cuba became a close Cold War ally of the Soviet Union.
Communications were restored with the opening of low-level missions called interest sections in the late 1970s, but a strict sanctions regime remains in place.
The report said U.S. Cuba policy is a source of tension with many other countries and keeps the United States from influencing or understanding Cuba. "The U.S. is left as a powerless bystander, watching events unfold at a distance."
A sudden collapse of Cuba's government is unlikely, the report added. "It is thus more likely that the post-Castro era will be led by factions of the current regime."
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