Bush tightens screws on Castro

Courting a key political constituency, the president says he's ratcheting up enforcement of the embargo on Cuba.

WASHINGTON - President Bush announced measures Friday meant to further squeeze Fidel Castro and help speed the return of democracy to Cuba.

Bush ordered the Homeland Security Department to crack down on illegal U.S. tourism to Cuba in an effort to deny Castro's communist government millions of dollars in annual revenue.

He also said he would raise the number of Cubans eligible for legal admission to the United States.

And Bush directed Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Mel Martinez, a Cuban native, to chair a new commission to develop a comprehensive plan for rapid U.S. assistance in the event of Castro's fall.

"The Castro regime will not change by its own choice, but Cuba must change," Bush said at the White House Rose Garden.

"No matter what the dictator intends or plans, Cuba sera pronto libre," Bush said, slipping into Spanish that translates into "Cuba will soon be free."

Bush hoped the message to Havana would also resonate in South Florida, home to more than 1-million Cuban-Americans who have the clout to swing Florida's vote in next year's presidential elections, either awarding, or denying, a candidate the state's 27 electoral votes.

The measures marked more of an escalation than a revolution in U.S. policy, which has been centered on efforts to strangle Castro's government since he seized power from a U.S.-backed dictator in 1959 and expropriated some $2-billion in U.S. assets.

A U.S. embargo on Cuba, put in place under President Dwight Eisenhower, has survived nine additional American presidents - as has Castro, whose country of 11-million hasn't been allowed to elect its leader since 1948.

A decade ago, in an attempt to encourage economic and political reforms, the United States eased some restrictions on travel to allow journalists, scholars and family members to visit Cuba.

Loopholes in those restrictions, however, have combined with travel through third countries such as Canada and Mexico to make other types of American visitors a large and growing part of Cuba's $2-billion tourism industry.

The money, said Bush, helps "to prop up the dictator and his cronies," and to feed "the illicit sex trade, a modern form of slavery which is encouraged by the Cuban government."

About 200,000 Americans visit Cuba each year, an estimated one-third of them illegally.

Friday's announcement came more than a year after Bush held out the promise of improved U.S.-Cuba ties in exchange for political reforms aimed at free and fair elections in Cuba.

"The dictator has responded with defiance and contempt," said Bush, "and a new round of brutal oppression that outraged the world's conscience."

Castro jailed 75 of his political opponents in April, slapping some with sentences of up to 20 years. Several European countries, long opposed to the U.S. embargo, have responded with economic sanctions.

Emboldened by those moves, some 14,000 Cubans signed a petition delivered to Castro last week calling for political change.

Politics of a different sort are at stake for Bush, who won Florida in 2000 by the narrowest of margins in a race ultimately decided by the Supreme Court. Bush ruffled feathers in South Florida's powerful Cuban-American community in July when his administration returned to Cuba 15 migrants whose boat was intercepted by the Coast Guard at sea.

The president's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, opposed the decision, in a rare public dispute for the political family, fearing that Castro might renege on promises not to punish the migrants upon their return.

President Bush said Friday that the administration is reviewing how it processes Cuban migrants caught at sea after a hazardous 90-mile journey across the Straits of Florida. However, the White House said there would be no change in the wet foot/dry foot policy.

That policy, established in the Clinton administration, allows Cuban migrants who reach American shores to stay while those caught at sea are sent back.

Officials would not say Friday how many more visas might be issued for Cubans wishing to leave the island. Currently, the United States has a 20,000-visa-a-year lottery for Cubans, but it has been having trouble meeting its goal because of security requirements imposed after the 9/11 terror attacks.

Bush also directed that his prodemocracy program for Cuba be backed by an information assault on the island nation.

He called for an expansion of Radio and TV Marti, U.S.-government supported broadcasts beamed into Cuba, as well as printed materials and Internet sites. Bush also called for expanding a program through which thousands of radios have been handed over to Cubans at U.S. taxpayer expense to penetrate the state-controlled media.

Friday was a holiday in Cuba and there was no immediate reaction from the government or the news media it controls. Bush's message was not carried on local radio and television.

Dagoberto Rodriguez, head of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, blasted the effort Thursday, saying in a news conference that the American president is "acting like a lawless cowboy" in his efforts to woo Cuban-Americans in Florida.

Jorge Mas Santos, the chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation, which has been very critical of the administration, said Friday's announcement was "a good step."

"This community has high expectations," he said. "This is a community that has used its power to vote very effectively in the past."

In the 2000 election Bush received about 80 percent of the approximately 450,000 votes cast by Cuban-Americans in South Florida.

"He's tiptoeing around the margins," said Damian Fernandez, the director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University. "The question is one of heightened expectations. For many in the Cuban-American community, it's "We voted for you; you won Florida; you promised - where are the deliverables?' "

- Information from the Cox News Service, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Washington Post and Associated Press was included in this report.

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