Global Policy Forum

By Edith M. Lederer

Cuba sought fresh support from the American people and the United Nations to end the four-decade U.S. embargo on the island, and dismissed the Bush administration's campaign to topple Fidel Castro as a failure. Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said if Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry defeats President Bush in November and lifts some restrictive measures against Cuba, "that would be positive." But only a complete end to the social and economic embargo will satisfy the Cuban government, he told The Associated Press in an interview on Thursday.

Perez Roque made a sharp distinction between Washington's hard line toward the Cuban leader and the support for easing the sanctions among the American public and in the U.S. Congress. He praised the House of Representatives for voting this week to nullify the Bush administration's new rules restricting family travel to Cuba and to remove barriers to agriculture sales and student exchanges. Calling the House action a "positive decision," he said it shows the embargo is only supported by the U.S. government "and by a small portion of the Cuban-born extremist right wing in the United States," he said. "They are an indication of a failed policy that has no future."

But as with past efforts by Congress to ease the economic and social sanctions imposed on Cuba, this week's House moves are expected to make little headway against an administration determined not to make life easier for Castro. It has threatened to veto a $90 billion spending bill if it contains any language weakening sanctions. Despite Bush's policy of regime change in Cuba, Perez Roque said, "We feel optimistic and we are certain about our future."

"We believe that we have the strength, the unity and the passion to preserve our country, to continue building a more just society than we have now," he said. "We feel optimistic about the fact that when the blockade will be lifted, both the people of Cuba and the people of the United States will be friends once again."

Taking aim at the Bush administration, Perez Roque said he wondered how 40 million people in the United States have no health insurance while in a small, much less affluent country like Cuba there is free health care.

Over the weekend, before returning to Havana, he said he would meet with various groups representing wide sectors of the Cuban community in the United States favor of normalizing relations -- both American and Cuban-born. "We have been saying during a lot of years that we are in favor of the normalization of relations between Cuba and the United States," the Cuban minister said. "We are not against the American people. We don't feel that the American people are our enemy. On the contrary, we admire (their) culture."

Acknowledging that another international vote condemning American sanctions against Cuba won't likely change U.S. policy, Perez Roque said his country would still press for a new United Nations vote on Oct. 28 to demonstrate that much of the world opposes the four-decade trade embargo. "From a moral point of view, I think it is important," Perez Roque said in the interview during his visit to the U.N. General Assembly. "It is very important for the Cuban people because it is the proof that the international community rejects" the sanctions, he said.

For the last 13 years, the U.N. General Assembly has overwhelmingly adopted a resolution each year condemning the U.S. embargo against the communist country. Last year, the vote was 179-3 with only the United States, Israel and the Marshall Islands opposed.

Kerry, like Bush, supports the U.S. embargo but has said he wants a review of American policy toward the island, including a long-standing travel ban. The Bush administration tightened restrictions on travel to Cuba in June among other measures aimed at squeezing the communist country's economy and driving Castro from office. Cuban authorities called it an electoral ploy to placate anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Florida. Perez Roque said the new measures were having a "tremendous impact," especially on Cuban families in both countries, who are only allowed to visit once every three years. "However, they are useless in trying to defeat the Cuban people," the minister said.

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