Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro yesterday praised the Obama administration for lifting US restrictions on family travel to Cuba, but said more changes were needed in US policy towards the island.
“The measure of easing the restrictions on trips is positive although minimal. Many others are needed,” he wrote in a column published on a Cuban government website.
The reclusive 82-year-old Castro criticised in particular the US policy of granting Cuban emigres almost automatic residency if they reach American soil, which encourages Cubans to leave their communist-run country by sea.
His comments came in his second column of the day, after he complained in his first one the White House had done nothing to end the 47-year US trade embargo against Cuba, vowing that Havana would not beg for it to be lifted.
“We do not have the slightest desire to harm Obama,” Castro said. “He doesn’t have responsibility for what occurred and I’m sure he won’t commit the atrocities of Bush,” he said.
Castro ceded power last year to his younger brother – and now president – Raul Castro due to illness, but he remains a powerful voice through his columns. These have been the only official Cuban response to Monday’s announcement by President Barack Obama granting Cuban Americans the right to travel freely to Cuba and removing limits on money they can send to family there.
Mr Obama’s steps were a shift from policy under Mr Bush, who tightened sanctions against Cuba in a failed bid to bring about political changes to the one-party state.
In his first column, Castro complained the White House announcement said “not one word about the blockade, which is the most cruel of the measures”. He described the embargo as a form of “genocide” that hurt Cuba’s economy and caused death and suffering by denying medical equipment and drugs to Cubans.
But, he went on, “Cuba has resisted and will resist. It will never extend its hands to beg . . . It will go forward with its head high, co-operating with its Latin American and Caribbean brothers.”
Mr Obama also eliminated some restrictions for US telecommunications companies, opening the way for them to offer services to Cuba to promote a “freer flow of information”, US officials said.
Castro mentioned neither those measures nor the remittances.
The White House announcement came ahead of a summit of the Americas that starts on Friday in Trinidad and Tobago, where Mr Obama is expected to come under fire from regional leaders over the US Cuba policy, which critics say is obsolete.
White House spokesmen said the new measures were meant to help Cuban families and promote democracy and human rights in Cuba. Opponents of the US embargo said the moves did not go far enough, but they hoped they were just a first step towards dismantling sanctions against Cuba. – (Reuters)