Americans back a new approach toward Cuba: poll

[Jimmy2]

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Most Americans think it is time for a new policy tack with Cuba, after decades of enmity between the United States and the only communist country in the Americas, a poll released Wednesday found.

President Barack Obama, set to leave on his first trip to Latin America this week with stops in Mexico and at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad-Tobago, is expected to address US policy toward Cuba at his first summit with Latin leaders.

Fully 70 percent of Americans said they favor ending the effective US ban on travel by its nationals to Cuba, and 60 percent said it was time for a new US policy with Havana, according to the poll by WorldPublicOpinion.org.

Both Republican voters (62 percent) and Democrats backed an end to the US travel ban, the survey found.

Obama's announcement on Monday that he was lifting curbs on travel and money transfers by Cuban-Americans to the island, was seen as an attempt to defuse tensions between the two countries.

But former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, 82, immediately derided the gesture, calling for more comprehensive measures including an end to the 47-year-old US economic embargo and an end to the special immigration treatment the United States gives Cubans. Havana says that treatment fuels illegal emigration and brain drain