Bush Won't Ease Hard-Line Vs. Cuba
Sun May 19,10:40 PM ET
By SCOTT LINDLAW, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush (news - web sites) is setting detailed conditions for easing the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, demanding free and open elections next year and turning aside pleas from former President Carter and others to ease a 40-year-old blockade.
But Bush also wants to improve the plight of Cuban people with an array of initiatives meant to bolster humanitarian assistance and communication with the island nation.
In a morning speech on Cuban Independence Day and in an afternoon appearance in Miami, Bush on Monday was to reaffirm his support for the embargo, which Carter, human rights groups and dozens of lawmakers from both parties say is a failure.
Bush planned to demand far-reaching changes in Cuba's political and economic systems before he will consider easing the embargo.
"Without major steps by Cuba to open up its political system and its economic system, trade with Cuba will not help the Cuban people, it will merely enrich Castro and his cronies and prop up their dictatorship," Bush was to say, according to excerpts released late Sunday by the White House. "With real political and economic reform, trade can benefit the Cuban people and allow them to share in the progress of our times."
The administration has long said that Cuba must allow democracy, foster a free-market economy and show full respect for human rights.
Monday's speech was intended as an elaboration on those themes, specifying what measures the administration requires before it will consider lifting the embargo — a step that would require congressional approval.
Bush was to say opposition parties must be allowed to organize, assemble and speak freely, with equal access to the airwaves. He also planned to say Cuba's 2003 elections must be monitored by objective outside observers.
Bush was demanding that human rights groups be free to visit Cuba to monitor the conditions for free elections. And he said all political prisoners must be released and allowed to participate in the election.
"Full normalization of relations with Cuba — diplomatic recognition, open trade and a robust aid program — 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," Bush said in his prepared remarks.
He also was to express his support for a referendum in Cuba asking voters whether they favor civil liberties like freedom of speech and assembly, and amnesty for political prisoners, said Jorge Mas Santos, chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation, who was briefed on Bush's message.
There was an irony in Bush's pro-democracy message, and in the site itself: Cuba mocked America's disputed 2000 election and its chaotic conclusion in Florida, and Cuba's foreign minister once offered to send observers to ensure fair balloting there in the future.
Bush also was to call on the government to open its economy and allow independent trade unions. Aides said he planned to back the establishment of government-business partnerships patterned after an approach the United States took with Poland as that nation emerged from communism.
The demands were the result of a policy review by the White House and were packaged in what the administration has dubbed the Initiative for a New Cuba.
Seeking to balance the hard line on the embargo with a sensitivity to Cuba's grinding poverty, Bush also was to announce a four-pronged strategy for helping the people there.
The measures will:
_Seek to cut U.S. bureaucratic hurdles that hamper American aid groups from working in Cuba;
_Send taxpayer money to such non-governmental groups that want to help in Cuba;
_Establish scholarships in the United States for Cuban students and professionals trying to assemble independent institutions and for relatives of political prisoners;
_Resume mail service between the United States and Cuba, something the United States has unsuccessfully sought since 1999.
Politics loomed large over Bush's speech and trip: Cuban-American voters helped carry him to a narrow victory in Florida, the state that decided the 2000 election, and they favor the kind of hard line Bush was espousing Monday. The tough talk also could appeal to the broader Hispanic vote throughout the United States.
Bush's brother Jeb Bush, the Florida governor, faces re-election this year and also is depending on Cuban Americans, who vote heavily Republican.
The president was to headline a fund-raiser Monday evening for the Florida Republican Party, which will use the money to boost Jeb Bush's re-election campaign. It will be the third fund-raiser for his brother the president has attended this year.
Last week, a group of 40 lawmakers — Republicans and Democrats — also announced support for easing the embargo, and on Friday, Human Rights Watch called for the same, saying the embargo "imposes indiscriminate hardship on the Cuban people and impedes democratic change."
"We concede that if we engage in China and North Korea (news - web sites), Vietnam, that we can bring them closer to democracy, have a more rapid transition, yet in Cuba we say the opposite is true," Rep. Jeff Flake (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., a House International Relations Committee member, said on ABC's "This Week" Sunday. "And I don't think that's right, and I think that we ought to get more involved there."
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