Jimmy Carter: Lift The Trade Embargo Against Cuba

[Better Believe It]

Jimmy Carter: Lift Trade Embargo Against Cuba
By Peter Kornbluh
March 30, 2011

“I hope we can contribute to better relations between the two countries,” Jimmy Carter said describing his mission in visiting Havana this week. At a remarkable press conference as he left to return to the United States today he issued a powerful, resounding, call for major changes in US policy toward Cuba.

Briefing reporters at the Palacio de Convenciones in Havana, Carter touched on virtually every key aspect of US-Cuban relations: the embargo, the case of imprisoned AID contractor Alan Gross, the Cuban Five, Cuba’s inclusion on the terrorism list and the need for greater freedoms—not only for Cubans but for American citizens who are restricted from traveling to the island.

“I think one serious mistake that my country continues to make is the trade embargo,” Carter stated bluntly. The economic restrictions on commerce were “damaging to the well-being of every citizen in Cuba,” and “impeded rather than assisted” reforms that he hoped would be made on the island under Raul Castro’s leadership. “We should immediately lift the embargo,” Carter said, as well as all restrictions on travel to Cuba.

In perhaps his boldest—and riskiest—statement as a former US president, Carter also called for the release of the so-called Cuban Five, a handful of Cuban counterterrorism agents arrested by the FBI and convicted of spying against violent exile groups and other US targets in 1998. Carter noted that the five agents had been in US prisons for more than a dozen years and characterized their further incarceration as “unwarranted.”

In response to a question posed by The Nation about why Cuba remains on the State Department's list of nations that support terrorism, Carter was unequivocal: Cuba’s inclusion on the list was “completely unfounded” and based on “untrue allegations” that Cuba was harboring international terrorists from the FARC in Colombia and separatist Basque group ETA from Spain.

Read the full article at:

http://www.thenation.com/article/159583/jimmy-carter-lift-trade-embargo-against-cuba

[frebrd]

1. K&R n/t

[liberal N proud]

2. I don't understand why we are still doing this

It made sense in the 60's but this is not the 60's

[Shagbark Hickory]

3. It made sense in the 60's?

[Better Believe It]

5. You can accomplish change overnight!

Give it another half century or so.

[Shagbark Hickory]

4. Carter 2012

[Xolodno]

6. The embargo...

...probably benefited Fidel more than anyone else.