Senator Nelson: I'd Only Travel to Cuba to Visit Dissidents & Alan Gross

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The Obama Administration should require a similar, principled standard for its "people-to-people" travel -- or eliminate the junkets altogether.

From U.S. Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL):

Anti-Castro, Pro-Embargo Lawmaker Open to Cuba Trip Focused on Jailed American

Washington, D.C. - Two leading Cuban dissidents, in a meeting with U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson here today, invited the Florida Democrat and outspoken opponent of the Castro regime to come to Cuba to see first-hand that the people there continue to be denied human rights and personal freedoms by a Communist regime bent on maintaining power.

Nelson, who remains one of the strongest supporters of the decades-old U.S. economic embargo against the tiny island nation, said for the first time that he would in fact consider such a visit – if it was focused mainly on helping to free a U.S. aid worker who was arrested and imprisoned there more than three years ago as well as directly visiting with courageous dissidents on the island.

“If I were to go to Cuba, I would want to see Alan Gross and do what I can to get him home,” Nelson told the anti-Castro dissidents, adding, “it would be on a humanitarian mission to visit with pro-democracy groups and opposition figures.”

The Florida lawmaker has taken an increasingly active role with Cuba’s leading opposition figures lately, including meeting with famed-Cuban opposition blogger Yoani Sanchez, and the daughter of Oswaldo Paya, Rosa Maria Paya, and the two dissidents he met with today, Guillermo "Coco" Farinas and Elizardo Sanchez.