Oppenheimer: "Obama should take the offensive on Cuba"

By Andres Oppenheimer

BOGOTA, Colombia -- miamiherald.com/andres_oppenheimer/

The U.S. State Department wasn’t terribly smart when it rejected a demand by Latin American populist leaders that Cuba be invited to an April 14 summit of President Barack Obama with 33 hemispheric leaders in Colombia. It should have accepted the petition, and used it to grill Cuba’s military dictatorship in front of a world audience.
The diplomatic ruckus started at a meeting of leftist presidents in Venezuela earlier this month, when Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa proposed that members of the Venezuelan-led ALBA bloc boycott the 5th Summit of the Americas to be held in Cartagena, Colombia, unless Cuba — the only country in the hemisphere excluded from the meeting — was allowed to participate. Venezuela and other countries immediately approved the motion.
U.S. officials responded — sticking to their policy guidelines — that Cuba cannot be invited because under the summit’s rules only democratically elected leaders who are committed to the 34-country Organization of American States’ rules can attend.
Colombia — the host country, which is trying to avoid defections that would mar the summit — sent Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin to Havana to try to solve the problem, but she came back empty-handed. She told reporters after the visit that Cuba indeed wants to attend the summit.
The diplomatic impasse is making big headlines in the region. During a visit here, almost everybody I talked to referred to the issue. Not surprisingly, the prevailing narrative in the Colombian press is that the United States is once again punishing a small and proud Caribbean island for its independent foreign policy — the old David vs. Goliath tale, which Cuba has played so often over the years.
So what should Washington do? Instead of rejecting Cuba’s presence, the State Department should have put out a statement saying that Cuban ruler Gen. Raúl Castro is more than welcome to attend the summit as an outside guest to answer several questions, starting with for how long Cuba plans to remain the last military dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere.
More specifically, and given diplomats’ penchant for legal formalities, Gen. Castro should be asked:

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