DOBBS FERRY, N.Y., Dec. 31 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following is a
statement by John McAuliff, executive director of the Fund for
Reconciliation and Development, a non-governmental organization he
founded in 1985 to normalize relations with Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
He has visited Cuba annually during the past decade.
As Cuba celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of its revolution on January
1, the incoming Obama Administration faces several choices about whether
and how it will address decades of mutual hostility and misunderstanding:
1) Will it honor Obama's campaign pledges and the Democratic Party plank
calling for immediate "unlimited travel and remittances" for Cuban
Americans -- or, as reported from a transition team source, backslide to
the Clinton Administration policy of annual visits and a fixed albeit
higher-than-Bush level of remittances?
2) Will it exercise its authority to grant general licenses to eleven
other categories of non-tourist travel including education,
humanitarian, religious, cultural, sports and "support for the Cuban
people" -- or wait for leadership from a divided Congress?
3) Will it listen to editorials from every leading US newspaper and to
the 68% of Americans, including Cuban Americans, who want to end all
restrictions on travel -- or accede to hard line exiles in Miami whose
PAC money has been spread widely among Democrats in Congress and whose
new champion is Senator Bob Menendez?
4) Will it follow Bill Clinton's successful path (without human rights
or democracy preconditions) to quickly end the embargo of Vietnam and
move to normalize relations -- or his delayed and ineffective gradualism
on Cuba?
5) Will it accept for humanitarian reasons Raul Castro's offer of
gestures to release prisoners each country feels are politically
motivated victims of the other -- or follow the Bush Administration line
of preferring Cuban dissidents remain incarcerated if they are not
released on US terms?
6) Will it heed the virtually unanimous call from Western Hemisphere
nations, European allies and the membership of the United Nations to
lift our embargo -- or maintain the distrusted unilateralism of the Bush
Administration?
Had Presidents Nixon, Carter and Clinton been bound by the
self-interested politics of Chinese, Vietnamese and Cambodian exile
leaders, we would still have embargoes and no diplomatic relations with
countries that are now vital US partners.
President Obama has the opportunity in the opening days of his tenure
not only to reverse the harsh and illusionary policies of the Bush
Administration, but also to begin to undo decades of failure that have
benefited neither the Cuban nor American people and isolated us
internationally.
Without action by Congress, Obama cannot restore the Constitutional
right to travel to all Americans or lift the embargo, but he should not
fail to open the door to a wide range of significant two way non-tourist
exchanges that will create mutual understanding and trust, essential for
both countries to repair relations.
[See recent calls upon President-elect Obama to modify or end
restrictions on travel by a wide range of American organizations at
http://obamacuba.blogspot.com/2008/12/us-civil-society-wants-change-in-us.html]
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