White House - Cuba has no say on Obama-dissidents meeting

White House: Cuba has no say on Obama-dissidents meeting

Washington (AFP) - The White House on Friday said Cuba's communist
government will have no say in which dissidents President Barack Obama
meets during his visit to the island later this month.

"The president does intend to meet with some political dissidents inside
of Cuba," said spokesman Josh Earnest, "the guest list for that meeting
will be determined solely by the White House."

"The president will meet with whomever he chooses to meet with."

The meeting is a difficult subject for Obama. Republicans accuse him of
betraying human rights in Cuba by engaging the regime.

"Despite concession upon concession by the United States, detentions of
activists have increased," said Republican presidential candidate Marco
Rubio.

The White House argues that a half century of isolation has failed to
make Cuba democratic, and that improving economic ties will force the
regime into political reforms.

On March 21, Obama will become the first US president to visit Cuba in
almost a century.

The White House hopes the trip will be a "Berlin Wall" moment, crowning
a policy they see as being among Obama's greatest foreign policy
achievements.

Last April, on the eve of a historic first meeting with Raul Castro,
Obama held a closed-door discussion with dissident Cuban lawyer Laritza
Diversent and political activist Manuel Cuesta Moura, along with a dozen
other activists from the Americas.

Castro's government has shown a willingness to slowly open the economy,
but Cuba's political system is still utterly dominated by the regime.

Human rights groups say that detentions have actually increased of late,
reaching around 8,000 last year, even as longer-term prisoners have been
released.

"What worries us is that Obama had said in December that he would only
come to Cuba if there was progress on human rights," Berta Soler of the
Damas de Blanco told AFP.

"The repression continues," she added.

Source: White House: Cuba has no say on Obama-dissidents meeting - Yahoo
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