Reuters
Friday, April 9, 2010; 8:13 PM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cuba's President Raul Castro and his brother,
ex-leader Fidel Castro, have sought to sabotage U.S. moves to improve
ties because they fear it will threaten their power, Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton said on Friday.
Clinton said Cuba's response to Obama administration efforts to enhance
cooperation revealed "an intransigent, entrenched regime" that had no
interest in political reform or ending the isolation imposed by
Washington's 48-year old economic embargo on the island.
"It is my personal belief that the Castros do not want to see an end to
the embargo and do no want to see normalization with the United States,
because they would lose all of their excuses for what hasn't happened in
Cuba in the last 50 years," Clinton said
"I find that very sad, because there should be an opportunity for a
transition to a full democracy in Cuba and it's going to happen at some
point, but it may not happen any time soon."
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Obama has said he wants to recast ties that have been hostile since soon
after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution. Fidel Castro stepped aside as
president because of illness, with his younger brother Raul formally
taking over in 2008.
The United States has over the past year lifted limits on Cuban
Americans traveling and sending money to Cuba, and initiated talks with
Havana on migration and mail service.
But Obama has said the economic embargo will stay until Cuba improves
human rights and frees political detainees, and Clinton said the outlook
was not good on either front.
"If you look at any opening to Cuba you can almost chart how the Castro
regime does something to try to stymie it," Clinton said while answering
questions at Kentucky's University of Louisville.
Clinton noted that in 1996, when her husband former President Bill
Clinton was seeking to improve ties, Cuba shot down two small U.S.
planes that were distributing leaflets. The incident effectively ended
that overture.
Over the past year, despite Obama's willingness to improve ties, Cuba
arrested a U.S. contractor on suspicion of espionage while political
prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after an 85-day hunger strike in
protest against prison conditions, Clinton said.
"It's a dilemma," Clinton said. "I hope (they) will begin to change.
We're open to changing with them, but I don't know that that will happen
before some more time goes by."
(Reporting by Andrew Quinn; editing by Philip Barbara)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/09/AR2010040904469.html
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