By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, May 18 2004 (IPS)

While the U.S. government hardens its stance towards Cuba, to such an extent that it is as seen as hurting the Cuban community in that country, the Caribbean nation loosens its position on emigration and opts for dialogue.

Havana is fomenting "relations that are increasingly more fluid and normal with the Cubans who live abroad," Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque told reporters here Tuesday.

But "the main obstacle that exists today in the relations with Cubans living abroad is constituted by the blockade and aggressive policy of the United States," he said.

As proof of the official Cuban policy, Pérez Roque said that the 3rd Nation and Emigration Conference would take place from Friday to Sunday with more than 200 Cuban emigrants in attendance.

He also confirmed that, beginning Jun. 1, most emigrants would be able to visit Cuba as long as they hold a valid Cuban passport. They would no longer need to apply for a visa.

According to the foreign minister, the only ones excluded from dialogue about emigration and from travelling to Cuba whenever they want are a small minority: members of terrorist groups in the United States or persons who openly favour the aggressive U.S. policy against Havana.

The programme intended "to hasten the transition to democracy" in socialist-run Cuba, announced May 6 by U.S. President George W. Bush, includes restrictions that affect a significant number of Cuban families, whose members are divided between the two countries.

Under the new U.S. policy – seen as a tightening of the four-decade-old embargo against Cuba – travel to Cuba to visit family is limited to just one trip every three years, and under a specific licence only valid for immediate family members.

Furthermore, the amount of money visitors from the United States can spend on food and lodging in Cuba is sharply reduced, and recipients in Cuba of remittances and gift parcels are limited to immediate family members.

The Bush plan proposes a fund of up to 59 million dollars to implement the recommendations.

Washington aims "to cause more suffering" of the Cuban population, "to destabilise the country" and provoke "an immigration crisis" through a policy that "puts more steam in the pot" so that it will explode, said Pérez Roque.

A massive exodus, similar to the "balsero" crisis of August 1994 (when thousands of Cubans fled the country, trying to reach U.S. territory on precarious boats) would be considered a direct attack on U.S. national security and sufficient motive for a military response, according to the Helms-Burton Act, approved by the U.S. Congress in 1996.

Washington’s plan was the target Friday of a million-person march on the U.S. Interests Section offices in Havana, and has come under fire here even from those who oppose the Fidel Castro government.

The Bush recommendations "are practically an incitement to armed conflict," said prominent dissident Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo, head of Cambio Cubano (Cuban Change), an organisation of moderate Cuban exiles founded in the United States.

Gutiérrez Menoyo returned from exile in the United States last August to visit family and is still awaiting authorisation from the Cuban government to legally reside in Cuba.

"The policy of the Bush administration has obstructed reconciliation amongst Cubans," he wrote in a letter sent to the countries of the European Union and Latin America that will meet next week for the Guadalajara Summit in Mexico.

According to Pérez Roque, Gutiérrez Menoyo is among those invited to participate in the Nation and Emigration Conference, even though the authorities are still in the process of defining the dissident’s legal status.

The minister did not say how many of the more than 200 emigrant participants in the conference would come from the United States, where 1.3 million people of Cuban origin live, 800,000 of them in the southern state of Florida.

Ministry sources say that another 200,000 Cuban emigrants live in more than 100 countries around the world. After the Cuban community in the United States, the largest groups are found in Spain and Venezuela.

In 1994 the number of emigrants who returned to the island to visit relatives was around 35,000, and least year the total was 167,710, of which 115,142 came from the United States, Pérez Roque said.

At the same time, he added, there has been a sharp decline in the number of Cubans visiting their family members in the United States, from 37,983 in 2000 to 6,757 in 2003.

The process of family reunification and emigration has been promoted by Cuba since the first dialogue with emigrants was conducted in Havana in 1978, with Castro himself participating.

Excerpt: