Cuban FM urges Obama to fulfill election promise

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By Li Xiaokun (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-02 13:18

Cuba's visiting foreign minister yesterday urged US President Barack Obama to fulfill his election promise to change policies towards Havana.

"Obama is a clever, hardworking president with goodwill," Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, the top Cuban diplomat, told Chinese scholars during a speech at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

Rodriguez, however, said he did not see any concrete steps by the US government to change its Cuba policies, though the US tone toward Cuba is "not as fierce as before" since Obama took office.

"Blockade, as the major US policy toward Cuba, hasn't changed at all," he said.

Obama had appealed during his election campaign to loosen limits on visits and money transfer of Cuban-Americans to Cuba and said he would like to meet Cuban top leaders if elected.

"I know Cuba is possibly not a priority in his agenda, and that he has limited power in making huge adjustment in Cuba policies. But I think he has the administrative power for certain changes," Rodriguez said.

"He has the opportunity to do that, as he won the election through these promises which won him votes in Florida, in Spanish-speaking groups and Cuban Americans."

The issues Cuba wants to discuss with the US include lifting the US financial embargo on Cuba, returning the Guantanamo base and erasing Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, he said.

Xu Shicheng, an expert on Latin American studies with CASS, said he is pessimistic about the prospect of the US making major policy changes on Cuba in Obama's four-year term due to domestic pressure.

"The conservative power is against lifting the blockage. Besides, Cuban Americans in Florida, who were key for the election, are supportive of loosening limits such as allowing them to visit relatives in Cuba. But many of them are anti-Castro and are against a complete lift of the blockage," said Xu.

But the Obama administration can follow the Carter government's example to take some pragmatic moves such as setting up a liaison office in Cuba to fulfill the promise and ease the relations, he said.