Cuba's FM: Open to normal relations with Obama
Associated Press
HAVANA -- Cuba's foreign minister urged President-elect Barack Obama to
keep his promise to ease restrictions on family travel and remittances
to the island, saying it would be a positive step toward normalizing
diplomatic relations.
Felipe Pérez Roque told reporters at the opening of Pakistan's new
embassy in Havana that ``we are willing, as we've always said, to one
day normalize relations between the United States and Cuba.''
Obama has said he plans to loosen restrictions on Cuban Americans who
want to travel or send money to Cuba. Those with relatives here are
currently allowed to visit only once every three years.
Pérez Roque said Havana would welcome such changes -- calling them ''a
positive first step'' -- but he repeated the communist government's
demands that Washington close its military prison at Guantanamo Bay,
rewrite immigration rules for Cuban migrants and completely lift nearly
50-year-old economic sanctions that outlaw nearly all trade with the
island and prohibit U.S. tourists from visiting.
''Cuba's position is very clear,'' he said. ``We firmly demand the
lifting of the embargo, the ceasing of extraterritorial measures taken
to persecute our trade with other countries.''
Ending the embargo entirely would require congressional approval, and
Obama has said he does not intend to do that.
Pérez Roque spoke a day after former President Fidel Castro wrote in an
essay that with Obama, ``a conversation can be held wherever he wants.''
Raúl Castro, who succeeded his ailing, 82-year-old older brother in
February, recently said he would be willing to talk with Obama.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/cuba/AP/story/801465.html
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