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US, Cuba ties in spotlight as Clinton visits Central America
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-06-01 11:36 SAN SALVADOR – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton began a visit to Central America Sunday, amid new US steps toward ties with Cuba that Washington hopes will slow a sudden regional push to end Havana's isolation.
The chief US diplomat is in El Salvador for Monday's inauguration of president-elect Mauricio Funes before traveling to neighboring Honduras for Tuesday's general assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS). The OAS is beset by a row over the pace of normalization with Cuba. US President Barack Obama's administration insists Cuba release political prisoners and improve political freedoms before it is readmitted to the 35-member organization. Some OAS states however want Cuba readmitted right away. A senior US official, who is traveling with Clinton, told reporters that Havana informed Washington on Saturday that it will take up the US offer to resume long-stalled talks on migration issues and on direct mail service. "We and the Cubans have to determine a mutually convenient place and time," he added on the condition of anonymity. The official said the Cubans "also indicated they would like to explore areas of additional dialogue," such as in counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, hurricane and disaster preparedness response. US officials said May 23 that the Obama administration had proposed to resume the discussions on migration issues, wihch had been conducted every two years until they were suspended in 2003 by former president George W. Bush. It was also Washington that proposed recently to resume direct mail service, the official said, adding mail has for years, if not decades, been sent between the United States and Cuba through a third country. When asked if the new steps to engage Cuba would affect the OAS meeting in San Pedro Sula, the senior official said "it is hoped ... that the region will recognize that anything done within the ambit of the OAS ... should support and foster this development, as opposed to hinder it."
Even though Cuba itself rejects the OAS, analysts said, many countries want to use the issue to either push for a lifting of the US embargo on Havana or for their own private agendas, such as to embarrass the United States. Since a popular Obama took office in January, analysts say, he has raised hopes among many of his southern neighbors that he will soon lift the embargo, even if he insists that Cuba first undertake democratic reforms. Apart from the new steps, the Obama administration has called past US policy a failure and moved to repair ties with Cuban President Raul Castro, who officially took over the reins from older brother Fidel last year. In April, Obama lifted travel and money transfer restrictions on Cuban-Americans with relatives in Cuba. Instead of having Cuba as the burning issue, analyst Michael Shifter said, the Obama team would have preferred to highlight a new era of US cooperation with leftist but pragmatic democratic governments like those in El Salvador, Brazil and Chile. Her visit to San Salvador is symbolic of the shift because Funes brought to power the Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation, former leftist guerrillas who fought the US-backed right-wing government in the 1980s civil war. US Congressman Eliot Engel, who chairs a subcommittee on Western hemisphere affairs who is traveling with Clinton, saw Clinton's visit to El Salvador as halting a lurch in Latin America toward the extreme left. "I think it means we want to engage with El Salvador because we don't them drifting all the way left," Engel told reporters. |
