US says Cuba to blame for cancellation of immigration talks

Yahoo ^ | 1/9/04 | Yahoo

[freedom44]

The United States said Cuban intransigence and not US opposition was to blame for the cancellation of a planned round of immigration talks this week.

The State Department said Washington was prepared to go ahead with the talks -- which the Cubans had proposed for Thursday -- but only if Havana would agree to address five areas of US concern in the immigration area.

"The United States is willing to reconsider the scheduling of the next round of migration talks when Cuba informs us that it agrees to a productive agenda, including a commitment to discuss these five issues," spokesman Richard Boucher said.

He identified the five issues as: Cuba's refusal to grant exit permits to qualified Cubans who want to come to the United States, its failure to arrange a new registration system for a visa lottery, the need for Cuba to provide a deep-water port for repatriation, restoring access to Cuban return migrants by US officials in Havana and Cuba's obligation to accept the return of its nationals deemed excludable by the United States.

"We have raised each of these issues in at least the last six sessions of the talks and Cuba has refused to discuss them substantively," Boucher told reporters.

"Consequently when the Cuban government proposed January 8th for the next round of migration talks, we determined that, given the Cuban government's expressed unwillingness to engage on these five most important issues, another round of talks at this point did not serve our interests," he said.

Late Tuesday, Cuba accused the United States of unilaterally cancelling the talks, calling the move "irresponsible" and the explanation "unrealistic and absurd."

The five US issues lack "the slightest significance to the advancement of the Migration Accords," the Cuban foreign ministry said in a statement.

"Clearly, in the imperial language of the US officials, 'dealing seriously' means that Cuba should be willing to make every unilateral concession needed and give in to every whim and demand of the US authorities," it said.

But it added that Havana has "never refused to discuss and analyze any issue brought up by US officials" during migration talks" and that it was "willing to seriously discuss ... all the issues mentioned by US authorities."

Thursday's cancelled talks were to have been part of immigration discussions that the two countries have held periodically since the Migration Accords were signed in 1994 to ensure "safe and orderly" immigration between the Cold War foes.

After the last round of talks in New York in June, the United States accused Cuba in September of failing to live up to its commitments under the accords by refusing to issue exit visas to more than 600 Cuban citizens that held US visas.

[freedom44]

On or Off free Cuba ping.

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[Shermy]

http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showa.html?article=31316


Kucinich on Cuba...

"...The line of questioning about Cuba prompted the one time during the interview where Kucinich notably paused before answering a question.

Kucinich said flatly that he was not an advocate for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. But when asked if he considered Cuba a police state or repressive regime, Kucinich waited for about 20 seconds before responding as follows: “He’s had some practices in dealing with political dissidents that I don’t approve of. I don’t believe Castro is beyond criticism . . . (but) I do think it would be helpful for the U.S. to have some process of constructive engagement.”

[Pan_Yans Wife]

Why am I not surprised?

And why does he even bother running?

[Guillermo]

One'd definitely be very hard pressed to find a Lefty policitician offer some real criticism of Castro.

In fact, the increasing trend is to blame the US for all that ails Cuba and all of Castro's decisions.