President George Bush will offer resumed direct mail services and new aid programmes to Cuba, but will maintain the US embargo until the Communist-ruled island returns to democracy, according to excerpts of a major policy speech released on Monday.
Bush is expected in a speech at the White House to outline the minimum steps Cuban leader Fidel Castro must take to bring an end to the 40-year-old embargo and a resumption of diplomatic relations with Washington.
”Full normalisation of relations with Cuba — diplomatic recognition, open trade and a robust aid programme — will only be possible when Cuba has a new government that is fully democratic, when the rule of law is respected, and when the human rights of all Cubans are fully protected,” the prepared text of Bush?s speech read, released late on Sunday.
He is also expected to offer measures aimed at helping
individual Cubans improve their economic and social status and keep in touch with relatives in the United States.
He is then scheduled to travel to Miami, where he will take part in celebrations marking 100 years of Cuba’s independence from Spain.
In Miami, Bush is also scheduled to meet with leaders of the vehemently anti-Castro Cuban-American community and attend a fundraiser for the Florida Republican Party.
Support from anti-Castro Cubans is key to the re-election hopes of Bush’s brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and the president was widely expected to take a tough line against Castro’s regime.
Bush was to call on Castro to release all political prisoners and allow opposition parties to operate in time for Cuban National Assembly elections scheduled for next year.
The president also wants free access for human rights groups and international vote monitors and equal access to Cuban news media for all political groups.
However, Bush also was to offer to immediately resume direct mail service to the island, provide assistance to Cubans through international aid organisations and announce the establishment of scholarships in the United States for Cubans trying to build independent civic institutions and for family members of political prisoners.
The president also plans to match any openings by Castro with a concurrent US gesture, the White House said in a statement.
”If the Cuban government takes these concrete steps toward democracy, President Bush will work with the United States Congress to ease the ban on trade and travel between the United States and Cuba,” the statement read.
The remarks released by the White House appeared to put US policy toward Cuba in line with the goals of the Varela Project, a petition drive organised by Cuban dissidents.
Project organisers last month presented the petition with more than 11 000 signatures to the Cuban National Assembly seeking a referendum on political pluralism and market-minded economic change.
The president also appears to have rejected calls for an immediate end to the embargo by former president Jimmy Carter, who was warmly hosted by Castro last week during a historic six-day visit to the communist island.
Carter, who sought rapprochement with Cuba during his 1977-1981 term in office, was the first current or former US president to visit the island since Castro came to power in 1959.
Carter mentioned the Varela Project in an unprecedented public address on Tuesday, broadcast live on official Cuban media, marking the first time millions of Cubans had heard of it. Carter also urged Castro to allow the project to move forward, to show foreign critics Havana is not afraid to face a peaceful, legal challenge.
Castro, who has yet to comment on Carter’s pitch, is already preparing his response to Bush. In a statement by Vice President Carlos Lage in Madrid, published in Cuban media on Sunday, Castro said Washington appeared to be creating ”conditions for future evil actions” against Cuba.
Meanwhile, advocates of ending the embargo made their views known.
”We concede that if we engage in China and North Korea, Vietnam, that we can bring them closer to democracy, have a more rapid transition. Yet in Cuba we say the opposite is true,” Republican Representative Jeff Flake said on ABC’s ”This Week” programme.
Washington slapped a full economic embargo on Cuba in 1961 and also imposes an effective travel ban by barring US citizens from spending money on the island, arguing that any income from US trade or travel would be used to support Castro’s regime. ? Sapa-AFP