By JUAN TAMAYO — The Miami Herald
One
week after President Barack Obama won re-election, Havana offered a
"draft agenda" for U.S.-Cuba negotiations that largely repeats its
years-old positions but almost directly offers to swap American Alan
Gross for five Cuban spies. The statement by Foreign Minister Bruno
Rodriguez Parrilla Lopez to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday
received little initial media attention. It was disseminated more
broadly Wednesday by his ministry and Cuba's diplomatic mission in
Washington.
Obama
has lifted nearly all limits on Cuban-American travel and remittances
to the island, allowed educational visits by other U.S. residents, and
restarted - and then stopped again - bilateral talks on migration
issues. But his administration has repeatedly said that more significant
improvements in bilateral relations can come only after Cuba frees
Gross, a U.S. Agency for International Development subcontractor serving
a 15-year prison sentence.
Wayne
Smith, a former chief U.S. diplomat in Havana and now a senior fellow
at the Center for International Policy in Washington, said Rodriguez
laid out a list of issues that Havana has long said it wanted to discuss
in any bilateral talks. "He simply reiterated their position. I don't
see anything new there," Smith said. "This is a nonstarter. Same demands
as in the past. No offers of major concessions on human rights, etc.,"
Jaime Suchlicki, head of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban American
Studies at the University of Miami, wrote in an email.
Arturo
Lopez-Levy, a former Cuban government analyst now lecturing at the
University of Denver, called Rodriguez's speech "a list of maximum
demands that shows the bilateral conflict can be handled better but not
solved" during Obama's next term. But he added that the foreign
minister's words evoked Obama's offer of a "new start" in relations with
Cuba shortly after he won the White House in 2008. The U.S. State
Department said it had no comment on the Rodriguez proposal.
"Today,
here and now, I am again submitting to the U.S. government a draft
agenda for a bilateral dialogue aimed at moving towards the
normalization of relations," Rodriguez said. His agenda items included
lifting all U.S. sanctions; removing Cuba from the U.S. list of
countries with links to international terrorism; and ending the Cuban
Adjustment Act and the wet-foot, dry-foot policies, which Havana
complains unfairly lure Cuban migrants to the United States.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario