Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
TAMPA - Lifting trade and travel restrictions on Cuba is the only way to bring about real change in the island nation, panelists said Friday during a national summit largely critical of long-standing U.S. policies.
But some speakers at the third National Summit on Cuba showed there is still support for using the trade embargo, now more than four decades old, and recently tightened travel restrictions to squeeze the island's economy and push leader Fidel Castro out of power. They were supported by a knot of protesters near the event's venue at the University of Tampa.
Wayne Smith, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and former chief of the U.S. interests section in Havana, said the containment policy has made less and less sense as the years have passed, especially after the breakup of the Soviet Union, with which Castro had aligned himself.
Today, he said, it is accomplishing little to bring about change in Cuba and causes hardships for Cuban-Americans who are having an increasingly difficult time getting there to visit their families. There is widespread support within Cuba for changing the policies, he said.
"For goodness sake, the Cold War is over," Smith said. U.S. Reps. Jeff Flake of Arizona and William D. Delahunt of Massachusetts participated by phone from Washington, saying there is support in Congress for changing Cuba policy, and they will keep trying regardless of who wins the presidential election.
"It's crazy," said Delahunt, a Democrat who serves on the House International Relations Committee. "It's the dumbest policy on the face of the earth."
The House voted last month to nullify the Bush administration's new rules restricting family travel to Cuba and to remove barriers to agriculture sales and student exchanges.
But as with past efforts by Congress to ease the economic and social sanctions, the House moves are expected to make little headway against a Bush administration determined not to make life easier for Castro.
However, Flake, a Republican, said, "We'll be back with it in January."