Posted on 04/01/2002 3:13:22 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
WASHINGTON -- A possible trip to Cuba by former President Jimmy Carter has proponents of improved relations between the United States and the communist island nation hoping the end is near for the four-decade policy of isolating Havana politically and economically.
Others aren't so sure, saying the Bush administration is likely to ignore Carter and his calls for lifting the embargo. Opponents of the visit say that if Carter goes, he should focus on helping dissidents and improving human rights, not improving commercial ties with farmers and big business in the United States.
Carter -- known for building houses for the poor and mediating conflicts around the world -- recently said he has accepted an invitation from Cuban President Fidel Castro to visit his country. The visit has not been scheduled, although a spokeswoman acknowledged the former president has applied for a Treasury Department license to go.
Castro acknowledged last week that he invited Carter because the former president tried while he was in office to improve relations between the United States and Cuba. Castro, in a televised speech, said Carter would be free to criticize Cuba while visiting.
Carter would be the first American president to visit the island since Castro's 1959 revolution. But the pseudo-diplomatic visit would not be a new experience for Carter.
For 20 years, the Carter Center at Emory University in Atlanta has mediated conflicts, observed elections and worked to eradicate diseases throughout the world. Carter has made trips to nations such as Haiti, North Korea and Bosnia.
"President Carter ... believes that in order to resolve a conflict, you need to be in dialogue with all parties involved and that you need to be neutral," said Deanna Congileo, a spokeswoman at The Carter Center.
Congileo said Carter and Castro first spoke about a visit at the funeral of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in October 2000, during which both served as pallbearers. Castro sent Carter a formal invitation in January.
"We'll see what he can achieve," said Elizardo Sanchez, a former University of Havana Marxist philosophy professor and Cuba's best-known dissident. "The relations between Washington and Havana couldn't be worse. Every day there are attacks ... against the United States ... in the press."
Sanchez said Thursday that he met Carter in Atlanta in 1993 and told him then he might be able to have a relevant role in improving the human-rights situation in Cuba.
But Sanchez is not sure this is the right time for a visit. He said the Cuban government has not shown enough good will recently, especially in the area of human rights. Sanchez, who favors better relations with the United States and an end to the embargo, was hopeful nonetheless.
"Maybe it can be a visit like the one Carter did to North Korea, which can initiate a first step in the long path toward bilateral relations," Sanchez said.
Others, such as Alfredo Duran, a Miami moderate and a veteran of the Bay of Pigs, think Carter's visit could have a profound effect.
"It would be the greatest thing since the pope's trip," said Duran, who says the United States should improve relations with the island.
Duran said the pope's visit led to more tolerance in Cuba of the Roman Catholic Church and other religions. A visit by Carter, he said, might lead to some tolerance for dissidents.
"Maybe for the first time in 40 years, we're unfreezing a little bit," said Sally Grooms Cowal, president of the Cuba Policy Foundation, a Washington group that favors closer ties to Cuba.
Cowal said a Carter visit would add to growing momentum toward lifting the embargo against Cuba and ending travel restrictions on Americans who want to visit the island. That momentum has put public opinion and Congress at odds with the Bush administration, which is seeking to tighten the embargo and put more pressure on Castro.
Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, which opposes the visit, said Carter should emphasize to Castro that the days of dictatorships are over and the time for democracy has arrived. Instead of going to the island to improve relations, Garcia suggested the former president talk about human rights and visit with dissidents in and out of jail.
Meeting with Castro, Garcia said, is no big deal, referring to the sessions the dictator regularly has with visiting members of Congress and others.
"It's like going to Disney World," he said. "If you don't see Mickey Mouse, you didn't go there. And in Cuba, if you don't see Fidel Castro, you didn't go to Cuba."
Asked whether President Bush would allow Carter to go, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said it is an administrative matter for the Treasury Department. But he added that Bush would want Carter to take a stern message directly to Castro "to stop the repression and to stop the imprisonments, to bring freedom to the people of Cuba."
The administration is likely to ignore Carter's calls for ending the embargo or otherwise improving relations with Cuba, said Alfred Rubin, a professor of international law at Tufts University outside Boston.
Rubin said Carter's trip would bring closer ties between the United States and Cuba only if that is what the administration wants. In that case, Bush might use Carter's trip as a way to deflect criticism from Miami's anti-Castro constituency, which opposes closer ties and has been supportive of the president.
"If the Bush administration wants to move toward improving relations with Cuba, they can blame Carter and pacify their right-wing supporters," Rubin said. "But I ... think they'll just ignore it."
Havana bureau reporter Vanessa Bauzá contributed to this report. Wire services also were used.
Showdown over U.S. Cuba policy nears --President Bush, Otto Reich----//---Sally Grooms Cowal (pro-Castro Cuba Policy Foundation)
Cuba Blasts Mexico Over U.N. Aid Summit **** HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters) - Cuba accused Mexico on Sunday of selling out Cuban President Fidel Castro to the United States at last week's U.N. aid summit in Mexico, as a diplomatic spat over the country's marginalization at the event heated up. Castro abandoned the summit in Mexico's northern city of Monterrey Thursday, shortly before President Bush arrived. Senior Cuban officials later charged that Castro, Latin America's symbol of rebellion against Washington, was asked by the summit host to make himself scarce. Mexico has been a close ally of Castro's government since he took power in 1959. But relations have been... ****
A great source of information and pictures. Freedom AdvocacyPromoting freedom and human rights around the world, beginning with Cuba.
Left Wing Stooges create another front for Castro ****In April, the "neutrality" of the CPF was questioned when it was honored by the officialist propaganda organ of the Castro dictatorship, Radio Havana. Radio Havana in its report ended up praising Grooms Cowal's efforts in starting the Cuba Policy Foundation by stating the following: "The Cuba Policy Foundation has challenged the ultra-right-wing Cuban-American National Foundation to a public debate concerning the merits of Washington's blockade of Cuba."****
Cuba (Castro) Turns on 'Diabolical' Mexican Foreign Minister****A blistering statement by the ruling Communist Party blamed the Mexican minister, Jorge Castaneda, for pressuring Castro to stay away from the Monterrey meeting to avoid a politically awkward crossing with President Bush. "The man guilty for what happened in Monterrey is called Jorge Castaneda," said a red-letter, front-page banner headline above the statement in the party's official newspaper Granma. Castro normally writes such statements. "Mexico's extremely strange policy over the incident has a diabolical and cynical architect -- Jorge Castaneda," it added of the former communist who is now a member of President Vicente Fox's right-leaning Mexican government.****
Castro always sticks someone else with the bill.
My personal hope is that the peanut farmer stays there and rots.
Relegated to history**** On Jan. 1, 1979, following a dramatic and unexpected move by President Carter, formal ties between the United States and Taiwan were officially terminated in favor of diplomatic relations with communist China. Mr. Carter's surprise announcement was immediately denounced in Washington, not only by centrist and conservative Republicans, but Democrats who were not consulted.
In Taiwan, an angry mob of thousands of students went so far as to attack a U.S. motorcade, slightly injuring Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher, head of the U.S. mission. While at the U.S. Embassy in Taipei, Ambassador Leonard Unger stood silently as the flags of both nations were simultaneously lowered and ties severed. There hasn't been a U.S. ambassador in Taipei since, and if one should decide to go back anytime soon, he had better first find a place to live.
We read in the Taipei Update that the former U.S. ambassador's residence has now been designated a "historical landmark," reopening this summer as the "Taipei House," a space for public exhibitions. The building came under the custody of the Taipei city government in 1997 when it became clear the U.S. wasn't coming back. John Tkacik, the Heritage Foundation's Chinese authority, told us Friday that he hasn't heard from Mr. Unger since running into him about a year ago. Mr. Tkacik recalls the termination of ties with Taiwan - when Mr. Unger walked away from the embassy "with the flag under his arm," so to speak - as "a period of intense uncertainty and low morale" among the U.S. Embassy staff.****
Who will be Carter and Castro's pall-bearers?
No. If we're clever, I think we can stick Fidel with Jimmy and the Bill.
Talk about grasping for straws...!
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