TRADE-AMERICAS: Isolation of Cuba Faces Test

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Apr 13 1998 (IPS) - The question of Cuba’s continued exclusion from regional trade and security groups will be aired again at the weekend Summit of the Americas in Santiago, Chile, amid the belief here that support is dwindling for the U.S. embargo.

Cuban officials hope their absence from the second summit gathering Apr 18-19 will be taken by other leaders among the 34 countries represented as a telling example of U.S. unilateralism imposed on the continent.

“Cuba is not against a just and equitable integration. What it does not accept is exclusion and marginalization,” said Isabel Jaramillo, of the Center of American Studies within the University of Havana.

“There can’t be integration and exclusion at the same time,” said Jaramillo, who categorizes the process begun at the Summit of 1994 in Miami as a manoeuver by the United States to consolidate what it has always considered its sphere of influence.

Cuban authorities have kept silent on the issue and the state- controlled media has limited itself to repeating declarations by foreign politicians against the isolation of the island.

Havana has been excluded from hemispheric summits since Washington convoked the first conference in Miami, now home to the majority of anti-Castro Cuban exile groups. President Fidel Castro himself labelled the 1994 conference a “colossal fraud” because, he said, it only analyzed regional problems, such as poverty and narco-trafficking, without considering the causes.

According to Castro, the United States is trying to preserve for itself the right of intervention in Latin America while imposing or promoting its own concepts of democracy and human rights.

At the first meeting, Argentine President Carlos Menem called for the democratization of Cuba and voices were also raised in favor a Haiti-style military intervention in Cuba to restore democracy. But the Summit of the Americas in santiago comes at a very different historical conjuncture than the one of 1994.

The secretary general of the Association of Latin American Integration (ALADI), Antonio Antunes, said that the re-integration of Cuba into the Latinamerican community will be “an obvious move.”

The process will include the Organization of American States (OAS), and even the Area of Free Trade of the Americas (FTAA), although this last body will require more time to complete the goal, Antunes said.

“Isolation (of Cuba) is not at all favorable to democracy, quite the opposite. It is contact with other countries that favors the growth of democracy,” he pointed out.

Havana a founding member of the Association of Caribbean States, asked last March to join ALADI, has demonstrated its wish to return to the OAS and may soon formally ask to join the Caribbean Community (Caricom). Official efforts to end the isolation policy promoted by Washington received strong support last January from Pope John Paul II in statements he made during his visit to the island.

Less than three months after the papal visit, Spain and Cuba normalized diplomatic relations, frozen since 1996. Guatemala also re-established relations with Cuba, the Dominican Republic opened a consulate and Menem wants to visit the island. Even president Bill Clinton felt obligated to respond to the Pope’s call for normalization of relations.

On March 20 he announced the lifting of several sanctions against Cuba, such as the prohibition of direct flights and the ban on Cubans in the United States sending money to the island. Washington also decided to permit the sale of medicines and medical equipment to Cuba and approved the creation of a strategy for the transfer of food. It authorized a license for a U.S. commercial fair on the island.

A Pentagon report under review at the request of the Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, meanwehile concluded that Havana did not constitute a threat to U.S. national security.

Business executives, retired military officers and various legislative aides of the Republican and Democrat parties have travelled to the island this year. The most recent group arrived on Sunday and it still on the island.

Political observers in Cuba believe that a new stage of detente between Havana and Washington may be in the offing, although Clinton has warned the his recent measures of normalization are to benefit the Cuban people and not the government of Fidel Castro. “We always bump into the obstacle of democracy,” observed Jaramillo on the justification of excluding Cuba from the second Summit of the Americas where, she said, Havana could have contributed a great deal.

The absence of Havana will be felt in one of the central discussions at the Summit, namely education. It will also be missed, for its strategic geographical location, in the analysis of the struggle against drug trafficking and international terrorism, observers said.

The added that, being excluded from the summit, meant Cuba would seek another another way to slip into the regional intergration process, perhaps through membership in one of the several area trade blocs. (FIN/IPS/da/mj/ip/tra-lv/mk/98)