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<p>IT COMES AS no surprise to learn that John Kerry, who hates to take one position on an issue when he can take two or three, has come down strongly in favor -- and strongly against -- US policy in Cuba.</p>

Peter Kirsanow points out that Kerry has flip-flopped even on Cuba. He has been in favor of raising sanctions, and now he’s not. A few days ago I started reading Carlos Eire’s Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy (published about a year ago). Eire is a professor of history and religious studies at Yale. He left Cuba in 1962, at age twelve, one of 14,000 children airlifted out of Cuba, exiled from country and family. He has written scholarly tomes, but this is his first book without footnotes, as he says. Why did he write it?...

Kerry's stances on Cuba open to attack BY PETER WALLSTEN pwallsten@herald.com John Kerry had just pumped up a huge crowd in downtown West Palm Beach, promising to make the state a battleground for his quest to oust President Bush, when a local television journalist posed the question that any candidate with Florida ambitions should expect: What will you do about Cuba? As the presumptive Democratic nominee, Kerry was ready with the bravado appropriate for a challenger who knows that every answer carries magnified importance in the state that put President Bush into office by just 537 votes. ''I'm pretty tough...

Months of growing tensions over the Bush administration's approach to Cuba are taking a toll on the president's standing among Cuban Americans -- one of the Republican Party's most crucial voting groups in Florida -- just as his reelection campaign is getting under way, according to a new poll. The survey shows that more than one-third of South Florida Hispanic voters -- a group consisting primarily of GOP-leaning Cuban Americans -- disapproves of the job the president has done ''promoting democracy and regime change'' in Fidel Castro's Cuba. Those results, compiled for Univisión Channel 23 by Washington pollster Rob Schroth,...

Mississippi: What do Fidel Castro and a bunch of “good ole boys” from Dixie have in common? Chicken and cheeseburgers, for starters. Mississippi, long considered one of the most politically conservative states in the United States, is cultivating a small but burgeoning trade relationship with Cuba’s communist-run government. Ships laden with an extensive and growing list of US food and agricultural products such as beef, chicken, rice and cheese now sail regularly from Gulfport and Pascagoula to Havana, the Cuban capital. The exports, legal under an exemption to the United States’ four-decade-old trade embargo of Cuba, have whetted interest in...

Afew weeks ago, Cuba's communist dictator Fidel Castro prohibited human-rights leader Oswaldo Payá from traveling to Germany to speak about the human-rights situation in Cuba. Payá responded by sending a message to the international community: ``We have never supported [Cuba's] isolation, but at this late date, it is an insult to be told that foreign tourism and investment can lead to an opening in Cuba. Cultural exchanges in Cuba take place under rules set up by a government that in a true apartheid manner excludes, exploits and humiliates the Cuban people. Even if it is not their intention, those who...

WASHINGTON – Legislation that would relax the ban on travel to Cuba is headed for failure even though it passed the House and the Senate. Supporters of the bill conceded Wednesday that Republican leaders would strip the provision from the transportation funding bill during House and Senate negotiations so President Bush would not have to veto an important appropriations bill. "A veto would create too much of a firestorm," said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. "They will find some other way to finesse it." Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., a key negotiator who will help craft the final bill, wants the...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The House of Representatives voted to end the decades-old restriction prohibiting travel to Cuba, a measure US President George W. Bush (news - web sites) has already indicated he would veto. By 227 to 188, lawmakers approved a bill authored by Representative Jeff Flake which would withhold funding to enforce the travel ban, effectively ending restrictions on travel to Cuba by US citizens. The House has approved similar legislation in the past, only to see the US Senate fail to take up the measure. The bill is given better odds this year, however, with the creation of...

<p>WASHINGTON — Defying a threatened presidential veto, the Senate joined the House Thursday in moving to end four-decade-old restrictions on travel to Cuba.</p> <p>"It is not constructive at all to try to slap around Fidel Castro by imposing limits on the American people's right to travel," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.</p>

POLICY AGAINST CUBA IS NOT THE AMERICAN WAY An exclusive interview with Harry Belafonte By Sandra Levinson Cubanow.- What kind of commitment does it take to still be here, supporting Cuba, after all these years? I don't see it as a supreme effort, it's a way of life: if you believe in freedom, if you believe in justice, if you believe in democracy, if you believe in people's rights, if you believe in the harmony of all humankind, I don't know if you have any other choice than to be there for as long as it takes. But, what I...

SALT LAKE CITY - While President Bush has been focused on troublesome problems in far-off Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, he is paying new attention to Cuba, which could cause election-year problems in his own backyard. Bush's new interest in Cuba comes at a time when there is evidence of a policy split between Fidel Castro and his hard-line supporters on the one hand, and, on the other, a group of well-placed officials and military men who favor a softer line at home and a warmer relationship with the US. The maneuverings are subtle and extremely cautious, because overt...

A car bomb kills six and wounds 35 in Baghdad. Al-Qaida reportedly is planning new assaults on the United States. Clearly, Fidel Castro is in trouble. Fidel Castro? What does he have to do with Iraq and Osama bin Laden? Nothing, of course, but that may just be the point. Bush's preemptive war on Iraq has led to an occupation that isn't going well. American casualties and suicides are up. The Army brass is in virtual public revolt, with half of our forces mired in Iraq, and brutally long assignments raising fears about re-enlistments and recruiting. Republicans are chafing at...

HAVANA (Reuters) - Communist Cuba on Monday rejected renewed pressure from Washington to undertake democratic reforms and said President Bush was "dreaming" of a post-Castro transition. A Cuban Foreign Ministry statement said steps announced by Bush to hasten political change on the island were aimed at securing the votes of the Cuban exile community in Florida, the pivotal state in his controversial 2000 election. "This is how the White House repays this Mafia for the scandalous fraud and tricks of the 2000 presidential elections," said the statement published in Granma, the ruling Communist Party daily. Bush said on Friday his...

WASHINGTON - President Bush Friday reassured Cuban Americans, a crucial constituency in his reelection bid, that he will keep the pressure on the Cuban government, naming a commission to seek ways to help bring about and prepare for democracy on the island.Bush directed his Cuban-born housing secretary, Mel Martinez of Orlando, and Secretary of State Colin Powell to oversee an effort ``to plan for the happy day when Castros regime is no more.''Bush's initiatives emphasized better enforcement of long-standing restrictions on travel and an effort to increase ''safe and legal'' immigration from Cuba.''We will increase the number of new Cuban...

<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush will outline new initiatives on Friday aimed at weakening President Fidel Castro's grip on power in Cuba and spurring democratic transition there without using force, administration officials said.</p> <p>Subjects Mentioned Fidel Castro White House United States Names Mentioned President Bush Minister Felipe Perez Roque More Wire Service Stories Breaking News Business Entertainment Politics Science Sports Technology World Bush's advisers have gone so far as to draft contingency plans for rushing humanitarian aid to Cuba and preventing civil unrest once Castro is gone.</p>

THE changes that have occurred in the world in the past 20 years are truly remarkable. We have left behind the Cold War and the confrontation between two irreconcilable ideological systems. The symbol of divided Europe -- the Berlin Wall, which Ronald Reagan famously urged me to tear down in 1987 -- has long since been destroyed. But one relic of the Cold War remains: the wall of the economic embargo imposed by the United States on Cuba 43 years ago. The lack of relations between the U.S. and Cuban governments, enshrined as it is in the U.S. policy of...

The head of Cuba's diplomatic mission here, Dagoberto Rodriguez, called on the Bush administration Thursday to "stop acting like a lawless cowboy" and "start listening to the voices of the nations of the world."

By GEORGE GEDDA, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Eager to please a key Florida constituency, President Bush directed his secretary of state and his Cuban-born housing secretary Friday to recommend ways to achieve a transition to democracy in Cuba after 44 years under Fidel Castro. AP Photo Secretary of State Colin Powell and Housing Secretary Mel Martinez will chair a panel that will "plan for the happy day when Castro's regime is no more and democracy comes to the island," Bush said during a Rose Garden ceremony. "The transition to freedom will present many challenges to the Cuban people and...

VARADERO, Cuba -- Sitting in the shade of a coconut palm, Jackie Haddad points to the aqua waves rolling ashore to explain why she and her husband returned to Cuba for the fourth year in a row. "It's so beautiful -- we're stressed, and we want to relax," said the Canadian lingerie manufacturer. "And you get more for your money here." Rumbling overhead, a vintage 1930s prop plane worthy of an Indiana Jones movie is the lone reminder that the Haddads are lounging in a land frozen in time and forbidden to most Americans. For years, travelers like the Haddads...