Hurricanes Shift Debate On Embargo Against Cuba

[kskiska]

Source: WP

LOS PALACIOS, Cuba -- A pair of devastating storms have prompted new calls for the United States to end its long isolation of Cuba, including from hard-line exile groups that are pushing for the Bush administration to loosen restrictions they had long favored.

For the first time in the 47-year history of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, Washington has offered direct aid to the island's Communist government, long dominated by Fidel Castro and his younger brother, Raúl, who is now nominally in charge. The offer marks a slight softening of the Bush administration's policy toward Cuba, motivated in part by a new generation of Cuban Americans who think a more open approach to the island during a time of political transition could help bring about a lasting change in government.

But even the most hawkish Cuban exile groups are pushing the Bush administration to go much further. Traditionally a voice for greater isolation of the Castro government, the Cuban exile lobby has asked Congress to lift the four-year-old rules that limit Cuban Americans to sending $300 every three months to immediate family on the island and to making just one trip to Cuba every three years. Some have even proposed a temporary suspension of the trade embargo, a cause taken up by a few members of Congress.

So far, though, the Cuban government has rejected the U.S. offer, preferring instead to rely on relief aid that arrives daily by the planeload from Russia and other more sympathetic countries. The Cuban government has mobilized the military to help in the reconstruction effort, including here in this hard-hit stretch of western Cuba, while legions of volunteers are working to pick coffee beans and other crops to salvage this year's harvest and repair damaged homes.

"I will not be surprised if we're looking at a major immigration crisis in the next few months," said Silvia Wilhelm, executive director of the Miami-based Cuban American Commission for Family Rights, an organization that promotes closer U.S.-Cuba relations, who visited the island after the hurricanes. "We're talking a situation that is very critical for the Cuban people."

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/23/AR2008092303668.html?hpid=topnews

[msongs]

1. we claim we want them to be free yet we do little to help them. whatta policy nt

[roody]

4. They could be free to die in a hurricane, like us.

[PATRICK]

2. A sop for the election?

My guess, and minimal at that.

[trthnd4jstc]

3. Lift the Embargo with Cuba. End the Tyranny of the Republican Foreign Policies. n/t

[roody]

5. This bad foreign policy is bipartisan.

[AlphaCentauri]

6. We know what is behind all this new effort to end the embargo

Cuba's new relation with Russia and oil.

Hypocrisy

[aquart]

7. I like Jackson Brown's song on Colbert last night.

All about traveling to Cuba.

[halobeam]

8. was great wasn't it, he does have a way get the greater point heard, and felt!

I'm seeing him tonight in the city. Very psyched!