Cuba Dissidents Won't Attend US Embassy Event

AP Exclusive: Cuba Dissidents Won't Attend US Embassy Event
WASHINGTON — Aug 12, 2015, 6:04 AM ET
By BRADLEY KLAPPER and MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN Associated Press

The Obama administration doesn't plan to invite Cuban dissidents to
Secretary of State John Kerry's historic flag-raising at the U.S.
Embassy in Havana on Friday, vividly illustrating how U.S. policy is
shifting focus from the island's opposition to its single-party
government. Instead, Kerry intends to meet more quietly with prominent
activists later in the day, officials said.

The Cuban opposition has occupied the center of U.S. policy toward the
island since the nations cut diplomatic relations in 1961. The Cuban
government labels its domestic opponents as traitorous U.S. mercenaries.
As the two countries have moved to restore relations, Cuba has almost
entirely stopped meeting with American politicians who visit dissidents
during trips to Havana.

That presented a quandary for U.S. officials organizing the ceremony to
mark the reopening of the embassy on Havana's historic waterfront.
Inviting dissidents would risk a boycott by Cuban officials including
those who negotiated with the U.S. after Presidents Barack Obama and
Raul Castro declared detente on Dec. 17. Excluding dissidents would
certainly provoke fierce criticism from opponents of Obama's new policy,
including Cuban-American Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio.

Officials familiar with the plans for Kerry's visit, the first by a
sitting U.S. secretary of state to Cuba since World War II, told The
Associated Press that a compromise was in the works. The dissidents
won't be invited to the embassy event but a small group will meet with
Kerry at the U.S. chief of mission's home in the afternoon, where a
lower-key, flag-raising ceremony is scheduled.

Their presence at the embassy would have risked setting back the new
spirit of cooperation the U.S. hopes to engender, according to the
officials, who weren't authorized to speak publicly about internal
planning and demanded anonymity. But not meeting them at all, they said,
would send an equally bad signal.

"It wouldn't be surprising if North American diplomats prioritize
contacts with the Cuban government," said Elizardo Sanchez, head of the
Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, a
relatively moderate dissident group. "If we show up, they leave."

The Obama administration says it is normalizing ties with Cuba after
more than 50 years of hostility failed to shake the communist state's
hold on power. It argues that dealing directly with Cuba over issues
ranging from human rights to trade is far likelier to produce democratic
and free-market reforms over the long term.

Key dissidents told the AP late Tuesday that they had not received
invitations to any of Friday's events.

Dissident Yoani Sanchez's online newspaper 14ymedio has received no
credential for the U.S. embassy event, said editor Reinaldo Escobar, who
is married to Sanchez.

"The right thing to do would be to invite us and hear us out despite the
fact that we don't agree with the new U.S. policy," said Antonio
Rodiles, head of the dissident group Estado de SATS.

In a letter to Kerry Tuesday, Rubio named Rodiles as one of the
dissidents who should be invited to the embassy.

"They, among many others, and not the Castro family, are the legitimate
representatives of the Cuban people," Rubio said.

Source: AP Exclusive: Cuba Dissidents Won't Attend US Embassy Event -
ABC News -
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/ap-exclusive-cuba-dissidents-attend-us-embassy-event-33031095