EU official suggests shift in policy on Cuba

[Jimmy2]

CNN) -- A European Union commissioner Monday told CNN's Christiane Amanpour that Europe's policy toward Cuba in the future will place less emphasis on human rights in the island nation than now.

The EU commissioner for development and humanitarian aid, Karel De Gucht, who is just back from a visit to Havana, Cuba, told Amanpour, "We have relations with a lot of oppressive regimes and we have a special regime for Cuba. It makes no sense singularizing them."

His comments come amid indications that Spain, which will hold the presidency of the EU for six months beginning in January 2010, intends to soften the organization's policy toward Cuba. The European Union currently criticizes Cuba's human rights record, but does not support the U.S. trade embargo against Havana.

The Obama administration, which has offered Havana a "new beginning," insists it will maintain sanctions as long as Cuba refuses to release political prisoners and improve human rights. But many critics overseas and a rising number in the United States say the embargo has totally failed to change the Cuban regime's policy and it is time for change.

Many in the U.S. Congress now support at least a relaxation of the government's travel ban on Americans wishing to go to Cuba.

The lawmaker leading that effort, Rep. Howard Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Amanpour there's a better chance now than ever of getting that travel ban lifted. "The brave people in Cuba who are standing up to this despotic regime want more contact with Americans," he said.

"I'm not here to say that getting rid of the travel ban will lead to immediate change in the regime," he added. "But in my heart of hearts, I believe that Castro does not want the travel ban to be repealed.

"He loves using American policy as a scapegoat for his own repression and for the terrible economic conditions the Cubans now live under. We are serving his purposes by our current policies."

The congressman was supported by the director of Human Rights Watch's Americas division, Jose Miguel Vivanco. His organization has just released a scathing report titled "New Castro, Same Cuba" on what it says is the sweeping repression of Cubans by Raul Castro's government.

Vivanco said the Obama administration should not only scrap the travel ban, but also the U.S. trade sanctions against Cuba because they have utterly failed in achieving American goals. "Regime change is rejected by the rest of the world. Nobody in Europe agrees with the U.S. Nobody in Latin America."

[jacksfull]

I hate to admit it, but the US policy toward Cuba is BS. The US re-established diplomatic relations with China in the 1970's and managed to weather through Tian'anmen and the rough times that followed from 1989 and decade after. The USSR collapsed in 1991, effectively ending the Cold War and those residual fears historically instilled by the Cuban Missile Crisis. US relations with Vietnam were normalized in 1995, a mere 20-years after one of the nastiest shooting wars the US has ever been involved in. So please, somebody in Washington explain to me again why we still have sanctions against Cuba almost 50-years later. It's duplicitous. But then, the word "hypocrite" is generally interchangeable with the word "politician".