WITH RAUL IN COMMAND, CUBA'S FRIENDS MULTIPLY
BY PABLO BACHELET
pbachelet@MiamiHerald.com
WASHINGTON -- After Fidel Castro took sick last summer, Washington began
urging Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe to push Cuba toward
democracy. Top U.S. officials traveled abroad to pitch the idea, and
President Bush often discussed Cuba when he met with visiting heads of
state.
Instead, the opposite happened.
Arguing that it's the right time to step up their engagement with Cuba,
rather than try to pressure or isolate it, most nations have either been
quiet on Havana or increased contacts with Cuba's emerging new
leadership, observers say.
Under Castro's brother and designated successor, Raúl Castro, the
island's international standing indeed appears to have grown despite the
absence of the 80-year-old's charisma and widespread speculation about
Cuba's future without him.
''Now Fidel has been ill and he's not in public, yet Cuba as a country
maintains that same profile,'' said Frank O. Mora, a professor at the
National War College in Washington. ``It's almost counterintuitive.''
Washington has long insisted that Cuba must change its communist system
before it can enjoy warm relations with the democratic world. Cuba has
refused any significant changes, branded the U.S. demands as a violation
of its sovereignty, and forged its identity as David fighting the
American Goliath.
This standoff had gone on for decades, but the stakes suddenly increased
when Cuba announced last July 31 that Castro had undergone intestinal
surgery and handed the reins of power to his brother and a half-dozen
other senior government officials -- apparently raising the prospects
for change.
A handful of countries, including Costa Rica and the Czech Republic,
publicly declared that it was time for Cuba to change. But most ignored
U.S. requests for condemnation of Havana as Cuba stepped up its
international diplomacy.
Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque has been extremely busy over
the past 2 ½ months, making trips to Europe, Central America and South
America and an Asian swing with stops in India, Vietnam and China.
In between Pérez Roque's travels, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel
Moratinos paid a landmark visit to Havana, the first by a European
foreign minister since a harsh 2003 crackdown on dissidents prompted the
European Union to freeze contacts with Havana.
The reasons behind most of the countries' decisions not to follow the
U.S. line vary, experts say.
Left-wing presidents unlikely to push Cuba now dominate in South
America, from anti-U.S. populists like Venezuela's Hugo Chávez to
Brazil's moderate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
''They're happy to have perfectly normal relations with Cuba,'' said
William LeoGrande, a Cuba expert with American University in Washington,
``and they think the U.S. policy of isolation is a big mistake.''
And while many countries believe that democracy is desirable in Cuba,
they are betting that its new leadership might make that happen. Those
leaders, the thinking goes, should be courted, not alienated with pressure.
''For the first time in a number of years, there may be an opportunity
here to influence events in a way that democratic regimes would favor,''
said one Western diplomat who asked to remain anonymous to speak freely.
``If we can do that by making some gestures, then why not?''
This approach was underscored by Moratinos' trip to Havana last month,
which was highly significant because Spain is the lead voice on Latin
America in the 27-member European Union. The EU punished Cuba with aid
cuts and other sanctions after the 2003 crackdown on dissent, but now
Spain is pushing to warm up EU-Cuban relations.
Moratinos told Spanish senators after his visit that his government
wants an ''intense dialogue'' with Havana, taking into account the ''new
political reality'' in Cuba.
He met with Raúl Castro for two hours, and the two countries agreed to
hold a dialogue on human rights, to start May 28. But to avoid angering
his hosts, Moratinos declined to meet with dissidents -- angering the
dissidents, the Spanish opposition, the Bush administration and many
Cuban Americans and underscoring the splits on how to deal with Cuba.
U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Miami, the ranking Republican on the
House Foreign Affairs Committee, said it was ''appalling'' that
Moratinos spoke about human rights in Cuba but ``took no concrete
actions to pressure his Cuban hosts on this issue.''
The European Union remains divided on Cuba. Nations like Greece, Cyprus,
Italy, Portugal and Belgium back the Spanish stance. The Czechs and
other former Soviet bloc nations like Poland, Hungary and Estonia favor
a tougher approach.
The Bush administration won something of a diplomatic victory last month
when EU officials agreed to mention Cuba in a joint statement after the
annual EU-U.S. summit in Washington. The statement said the two sides
would work together to support human rights, freedom of the press and
free speech in Latin America and ``in particular, we will support the
Cuban people as they seek to exercise these same rights.''
Cuba, for its part, has been carrying out a diplomatic offensive of its
own. Addressing the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council in March,
Pérez Roque said human rights should not become a pretext to advance
political goals.
The 118-member Non-Aligned Movement, which Cuba now chairs, issued a
complaint when Luis Posada Carriles, an exile militant accused in the
1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people, was released
from a U.S. jail on bond while awaiting trial on immigration-fraud
charges. The charges were later dropped.
A Non-Aligned Movement summit in Havana last September drew 50 heads of
state or government, including Presidents Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran
and Bashar Assad of Syria. Haitian President René Préval made an
official visit to Cuba last December.
Adding to Cuba's international heft has been its friendship with
Venezuela's Chávez, Castro's likely successor as leader of Latin
America's anti-Washington left. Venezuela now provides Cuba with an
estimated $2 billion a year in oil subsidies.
Leftist Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua
and Rafael Correa of Ecuador have also been strongly supportive of Cuba.
CHINA'S ROLE GROWS
China has become Cuba's biggest trading partner after Venezuela, and
three Beijing delegations have visited Havana so far this year,
including one that met with Fidel Castro for one hour last month.
Companies from China, India, Spain and Norway have lined up to explore
Cuba's oil deposits off its northwestern shores.
Recently, even close U.S. allies seem eager to court Cuba in what has
become a parade of dignitaries heading out to Havana.
Canada is sending Len Edwards, its deputy minister of foreign affairs,
to Cuba this week, and Japan and Singapore dispatched senior officials
to Havana earlier this month.
Mexico's new conservative President Felipe Calderón has made friendly
overtures to Cuba and reportedly plans to send a senior political ally,
Gabriel Jiménez Remus, as ambassador to Havana. One stumbling block:
Cuba owes $380 million to Mexico's export-import lending agency, BancoMext.
Even the secretary general of the Organization of American States, José
Miguel Insulza, has said he wants to begin a dialogue with Cuba. The
communist-ruled country was suspended from the organization in 1962.
CRITICS' AMMUNITION
To opponents of U.S. policy, all this is further proof that the U.S.
policy on Cuba isn't working.
''The administration's all-or-nothing posture is divorced from the
reality on which our approaches to North Korea, China, Vietnam and other
communist countries are based,'' Reps. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Charles
Rangel, D-N.Y., wrote recently for The Washington Post. ``It is a
formula for irrelevance.''
Both the U.S. and Spanish approaches face uphill battles, however.
Historically, Havana has undertaken no reforms -- either under pressure
from critics or in response to enticements from friends -- unless it was
under domestic pressure to change.
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