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Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Bush rallying nations to help post-Castro Cuba toward democracy

Bush rallying nations to help post-Castro Cuba toward democracy
By BEN FELLER | Associated Press
8:56 AM EDT, October 24, 2007

WASHINGTON - President Bush, ever pushing for a Cuba without Fidel
Castro, wants allies around the world to offer money and political
support so the island can be ready to transform itself.

It is Bush's vision for Cuban regime change: providing help on the
outside, prodding change on the inside.

Seizing on Castro's fading health as a rare opening, Bush was to ask
other nations Wednesday to help Cuba become a free society.

In remarks prepared for delivery at the State Department -- his first
standalone address on Cuba in four years -- Bush looks to the day when
Castro is gone. Bush describes a nation in which Cuban people choose a
representative government and enjoy basic freedoms, with support from a
broad international coalition.

For now, though, Castro is still the island's unchallenged leader, as he
has been for almost 50 years. And he remains a nemesis to Bush, whom he
accuses of being obsessed with Cuba and of threatening humanity with
nuclear war. At the age of 81, Castro is ailing and rarely seen in
public. But life has changed little on the island under the authority of
his brother, 76-year-old Raul Castro, who has been his elder brother's
hand-picked successor for decades.

Bush was expected to tout peaceful, pro-democracy movements in Cuba and
call on other countries to get behind them. In a direct appeal to
ordinary citizens in Cuba, he was to tell them they have the power to
change their country, but the White House says that is not meant to be a
call for armed rebellion.

Bush proposes at least three initiatives: the creation of an
international ``freedom fund'' to help Cuba's potential rebuilding of
its country one day; a U.S. licensing of private groups to provide
Internet access to Cuban students, and an invitation to Cuban youth to
join a scholarship program.

The latter two offerings help the Bush administration underscore the
kind of real-life limitations that Cubans now face, from blocked
Internet access to restricted information about their leaders to denial
of legal protections. The creation of the international fund is meant to
speed up societal transformation.

``We all know that Cuba is going to face very significant requirements
to rebuild itself,'' said a senior administration official, who spoke on
condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting the president. ``There's a
whole set of challenges that Cuba is going to face. The United States
will clearly want to help the Cubans as they define what it is they
need, but we think the international community should be thinking that
way as well.''

Washington's decades-old economic embargo on Cuba prohibits U.S.
tourists from visiting the island and chokes off nearly all trade
between both countries. Bush will ask Congress to maintain the embargo,
which has come under scrutiny and calls for reassessment from some
lawmakers.

Cuba staged municipal elections on Sunday, the first step in a process
that will determine whether Fidel Castro is re-elected or replaced next
year. The Communist Party is the only one allowed, and while candidates
do not have to be members, critics claim they are the only ones who ever
win.

Bush, increasingly, is speaking of a Castro-free Cuba. As he put it
earlier this month: ``In Havana, the long rule of a cruel dictator is
nearing an end.''

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/cuba/sfl-1024cubabush,0,238160.story

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