Cuba again offers talks with Obama government

Posted on Friday, 11.16.12

Cuba again offers talks with Obama government
But repeats old positions, says nothing about democracy or human rights
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

One week after President Barack Obama won reelection, Havana has offered
a "draft agenda" for U.S.-Cuba negotiations that largely repeats its
years-old positions but almost directly offers to swap Alan Gross for
five Cuban spies.

The statement by Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla Lopez to the
U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday received little initial media
attention. It was disseminated more broadly Wednesday by his ministry
and Cuba's diplomatic mission in Washington.

Obama, reelected the previous Tuesday, has lifted nearly all limits on
Cuban American travel and remittances to the island, allowed educational
visits by other U.S. residents and restarted — and then stopped again —
bilateral talks on migration issues.

But his administration has repeatedly said that more significant
improvements in bilateral relations can come only after Cuba frees
Gross, a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) subcontractor
serving a 15-year prison sentence.

Wayne Smith, a former chief U.S. diplomat in Havana and now a senior
fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, said
Rodriguez laid out a list of issues that Havana has long said it wanted
to discuss in any bilateral talks.

"He simply reiterated their position. I don't see anything new there,"
Smith said.

"This is a non-starter. Same demands as in the past. No offers of major
concessions on human rights, etc.," Jaime Suchlicki, head of the
Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies at the University of
Miami, wrote in an email.

Arturo López-Levy, a former Cuban government analyst now lecturing at
the University of Denver, called Rodriguez' speech "a list of maximum
demands that shows the bilateral conflict can be handled better but not
solved" during Obama's next term.

But he added that the foreign minister's words evoked Obama's offer of a
"new start" in relations with Cuba shortly after he won the White House
in 2008.

The U.S. State Department said it had no comment on the Rodriguez proposal

"Today, here and now, I am again submitting to the U.S. government a
draft agenda for a bilateral dialogue aimed at moving towards the
normalization of relations," Rodriguez said.

His agenda items included lifting all U.S. sanctions; removing Cuba from
the U.S. list of countries with links to international terrorism; and
ending the Cuban Adjustment Act and the wet-foot, dry-foot policies,
which Havana complains unfairly lure Cuban migrants to the United States.

Other draft agenda items included compensation for damages caused by the
U.S. sanctions, the return of the territory now used by the U.S. Navy
base in Guantánamo; an end to Radio/TV Marti; and a halt to U.S.
financial support for dissidents.

Rodriguez also offered to negotiate agreements in areas of mutual
interest, such as drug and people smuggling, terrorism, migration,
natural disasters, the environment and postal services, but made no
mention of human rights or democracy.

"An essential element in this agenda," the foreign minister added, is
the release of the five Cubans convicted of spying-related charges in
Miami. Havana claims they were trying to avert possible terrorist acts
by exiles.

"An act of justice, or at least a humanitarian solution, will arouse the
gratitude of my people and a response by our government," Rodriguez
noted, not mentioning Gross by name but clearly indicating a possible swap.

Gross supporters recently complained that while the Cuban government has
indirectly referred to a possible exchange for the spies many times, it
has never put a swap proposal directly on the table.

The 63-year Maryland man was arrested in late 2009 after giving Cuban
Jews three satellite telephones paid for by USAID's pro-democracy
programs. Havana has outlawed the programs, saying they're part of a
U.S. campaign to topple the communist system.

The Gross and Cuban spies cases are blocking the way to negotiations,
said Smith, who criticizes most U.S. sanctions on Havana. "It's a
stalemate. We've got to get around this in some way."

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/11/16/3099255/cuba-again-offers-talks-with-obama.html