Obama’s steps to ease embargo too little - Cuba

Obama's steps to ease embargo too little: Cuba

HAVANA: Cuba's trade minister Monday described U.S. President Barack
Obama's moves to ease the five-decade embargo on the island are
"incomplete and insufficient."

With Obama heading toward a potentially historic meeting with Cuban
President Raul Castro this week, Trade and Foreign Investment Minister
Rodrigo Malmierca criticized the U.S. leader's limited steps toward
easing the crippling trade and financial embargo the United States has
maintained on communist Cuba since 1962.

After the old Cold War foes announced a historic rapprochement on Dec.
17, Obama loosened several components of the embargo, allowing more
travel from the United States to Cuba, raising the limit on cash
remittances to the island and easing restrictions on certain kinds of
trade, among other measures.

"The measures Obama ordered are incomplete and insufficient, and do not
change the essence of this unilateral measure taken by the U.S.
government against Cuba," Malmierca told state newspaper Granma.

He said the measures were a "step in the right direction" but did not go
far enough toward ending the embargo.

Obama "has vast prerogatives – far beyond the measures approved last
January – that he could use to make substantive steps toward normalizing
bilateral relations," he said.

He called on Washington to allow Havana to use dollars for international
transactions and clear the way for Cuban exports to the United States
beyond the small quantities of rum and cigars that Obama allowed
travelers to bring back from the island.

"Beyond traditional goods like rum and tobacco, there are others of
excellent quality that can be included in this possible exchange, such
as biotechnology products," Malmierca said.

He added that American companies could expect the same treatment as
those from the rest of the world, receiving neither special benefits nor
punishment, if there is a further commercial opening between Cuba and
the United States.

"U.S. business people will enjoy the same treatment that is offered to
the rest of the world that has ties with the island today."

Obama and Castro will cross paths at the Summit of the Americas in
Panama Friday and Saturday which could yield the first substantive
meeting between U.S. and Cuban leaders in half a century.

The two men shook hands briefly at the memorial service for Nelson
Mandela in South Africa in December 2013.

To lift the full embargo, which Havana says has cost it $100 billion,
Obama would need the blessing of the Republican-controlled Congress.

Source: Obama's steps to ease embargo too little: Cuba | News , World |
THE DAILY STAR -
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/World/2015/Apr-07/293514-obamas-steps-to-ease-embargo-too-little-cuba.ashx