Economic crises, `spy' capers among obstacles to change

[Jimmy2]

An Obama administration that made several friendly gestures toward Cuba, hoping to at least warm 50 years of enmity, wound up its first year with mostly harsh retorts from Havana.

President Barack Obama and Raúl Castro in fact appeared to keep their bilateral relations on the backburner during the year, with both facing grim economic crises at home and perhaps trying to avoid the political risks that a rapprochement might create, analysts said.

``There's been no great initiative from Cuba, and no incentive in the U.S. to change much either,'' said Mauricio Font, head of the Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies at City University of New York.

Obama, who marked his first year in office this month, in fact took several steps during the year to change eight years of aggressive Bush administration policies on Cuba, in line with his April promise to launch ``new beginning with Cuba.''

His administration lifted virtually all restrictions on Cuban-American travel and remittances to the island, and increased the number of U.S. visas issued to Cuban visitors and permits for Americans to go to Cuba -- from chess clubs to softball teams.

At the U.S.' request, long-stalled talks with Cuba on migration and mail were resumed. Obama authorized sending packages to Cuba containing electronic and communications equipment like computers, and Congress indeed made it easier for Havana to pay for U.S. agricultural imports.

The State Department sent a top official to the mail talks -- Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Bisa Williams -- and shut down an electronic ticker on an outer wall of its Havana mission that displayed messages often critical of the Cuban government.

But Obama also continued to support dissident and civil society groups in Cuba, opposed lifting the trade embargo until Havana improves its human rights record and kept Cuba on the list of countries with links to terrorism.

A bill allowing unrestricted U.S. tourism travel to Cuba meanwhile remained stalled in Congress, and in April a retired State Department official, Walter Kendall Myers, and his wife were arrested on charges of spying for Cuba. They pleaded guilty on Nov. 20.

U.S. liberals who hoped the Obama administration would embrace more far-reaching changes on the Cuba front were severely disappointed, with some even blaming resistance from ``leftover Bushites.''

But most analysts agreed that Obama stuck close to his pre-election pledges on Cuba: a deliberate but measured increase in people-to-people contacts, family visits and communications, while engaging Havana in talks about issues of U.S. interest, like migration.

``We are taking it slow. We're not looking to make any sudden change at this time,'' said Arturo Valenzuela, assistant secretary of state for Latin America.

The limits to Obama's opening were underscored when a Madrid newspaper reported in October that the president had asked the Spanish government to ``tell Raúl . . . that we're taking steps, but if they don't also take steps it will be very difficult for us to continue.''

But while 2009 began with expectations that the two new rulers in Washington and Havana would get along better, and Raúl Castro repeated during the year that he was willing to talk to Washington without preconditions, he made it clear that he viewed Obama's gestures as too tepid to merit significant replies.

Cuban officials listed their priorities as allowing U.S. tourism to the island, releasing five jailed Cuban spies, ending the wet-foot dry-foot immigration policy, removing Cuba from the terror list and returning the Guantánamo Naval base. Cuba's diplomatic mission in Washington said it had no comment on this story.

Havana did take some tepid moves of its own in 2009.

State Department officials reported ``a marked improvement'' in the Cuban government's dealings with American diplomats in Havana. For the first time in years, it allowed U.S. consular officials to visit dual U.S.-Cuban citizens jailed on the island.

And after the U.S. diplomatic mission in the Cuban capital shut down its electronic ticker, Cuba removed several billboards near the building that displayed criticisms of the U.S. government.

But as the year wound down, it seemed that the tone of U.S.-Cuba relations was heading south again.

Drawing a sharp U.S. rebuke, pro-government mobs harassed street marches by the Ladies in White, a group of wives, mothers and daughters of political prisoners, and presumed security agents battered popular blogger Yoani Sánchez.

The second round of the migration talks, expected in December, was postponed until this year. Cuba turned back five U.S. religious and humanitarian groups at the Havana airport in December, apparently because they lacked permits to distribute assistance.

Havana authorities on Dec. 4 arrested a U.S. government contractor, and later branded him as a spy bent on subversion. Washington denied that Allan Gross, who remains in jail, was an intelligence agent.

On Dec. 20, Castro complained that the U.S. government ``won't quit trying to destroy the revolution'' and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez described Obama as ``imperial, arrogant, doesn't listen, imposes conditions.''

And more recently, Cuba bitterly protested its inclusion on the U.S. list of countries asked to tighten airport security procedures after an Islamic radical's foiled attempt to blow up a U.S. jetliner.

``Neither Fidel nor Raúl Castro are interested in talking about human rights and democracy, or in making gestures toward the United States,'' said James Cason, former head of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana. ``The U.S. policy of aggressive niceness is not going anywhere.''

Already, there is speculation that there will be no significant move toward improved U.S.-Cuba relations until after the U.S. congressional elections in 2010, and perhaps even after 2012, when Obama could win a second term and decide to spend some political capital on Cuba.

Raúl Castro also will be facing his own economic crisis as well as an older brother Fidel, ailing and officially out of power but still influential and almost genetically wary of any improvements in relations with Washington.

``Maybe when Fidel is completely out of the picture, Raúl can start looking to the north,'' said Andy Gomez, senior fellow at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies.

But Dan Erickson, a Cuba analyst with the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue think tank, said he did not expect any big changes by either side in the near future.

``The forces for continuity are extremely strong both in Cuba and in the U.S.'' he said.