Posted on Sat, Sep. 08, 2007
By JESSICA GRESKO
Associated Press Writer
CORAL GABLES, Fla. --
Democrat Christopher Dodd pledged Saturday that as president he would
end a decades-old trade embargo with Cuba and lift travel restrictions
to the communist island.
The Connecticut senator also said he would open an embassy in Havana and
shut down the 17-year-old TV Marti, a U.S. government-run television
station that broadcasts to Cuba.
"Other than the war in Iraq, no other American policy is more broadly
unpopular internationally," Dodd said of the United States' policy
toward Cuba.
Dodd called the current U.S. policy an "abject failure." As president,
he said he would seek a repeal of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which
strengthened the U.S. embargo against Cuba. He said taxpayers should not
spend millions of dollars annually on TV Marti, which virtually no one
in Cuba sees, and that he would reform Radio Marti, a companion radio
station.
The senator, who badly trails better known rivals in the presidential
race, said he would work to establish U.S. mail service to Cuba. He
added he would make staying in touch with family on the island easier
for Cuban-Americans, by allowing U.S. companies to lower prices for
phone calls there.
Dodd answered several questions in the Spanish that he had honed while
once serving in the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic. He said he
has faith in the Cuban community, and in their willingness to take a
look at his policy, though Cuban-Americans generally oppose any lifting
of the trade embargo.
Dodd sidestepped a question on whether he would meet leaders like Cuba's
Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez if elected.
"Presidents don't run around and meet with people automatically," Dodd
said, without directly answering the question.
Meeting with leaders without preconditions is an issue Dodd's fellow
Democratic candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have sparred
over. Dodd he said of his opponents' answers: "One was far too rigid and
one was far too simplistic."
Alfredo Mesa, a spokesman for the Miami-based political lobby, the Cuban
American National Foundation, said he wasn't surprised at Dodd's
statements on Saturday.
"His position has been consistently wrong," Mesa said of Dodd's
statement on Cuba, while adding Dodd recognized that changes in Cuba
have to take place.
Alberto Mascaro, chief of staff for the Office of Cuba Broadcasting,
which oversees TV and Radio Marti, said he had no comment on Dodd's policy.
Dodd is in Florida to participate in a debate for Democratic candidates
that will be hosted in Spanish and held on Sunday at the University of
Miami. Because only Dodd and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson are fluent
in Spanish, questions will be translated into English for the
candidates. Candidates are then only allowed to answer in English.
Dodd joked it's a shame the debate won't be entirely in Spanish.
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