U.S. POLICY
Don't reward Castro for Cuba's bad behavior
BY FRANK CALZON
frank.calzon@cubacenter.org
Speaking recently in France about the North Korean nuclear crisis,
President Barack Obama faced up to the futility and danger of extending
the hand of U.S. friendship toward countries whose fists stay clinched.
''I do not intend to continue a policy of rewarding provocation,'' he vowed.
Like North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and Iran seize every opportunity to
demonstrate enmity toward the United States. Yet their rewards, often
packaged with denials, keep coming.
During a visit to Moscow last year Tom Shannon, assistant secretary of
state for the Western Hemisphere, declared Venezuela's Hugo Chávez is
neither ''a military [nor] geopolitical threat.'' Never mind that
Venezuela had conducted joint naval exercises with Russia, invited
Russia to show off its strategic bombers to the Venezuelan military and
purchased more than $4 billion worth of Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets, Mi-17
transport helicopters and 100,000 Kalashnikov automatic assault rifles.
Shannon went on to aver, ``Should the Russian navy intend further naval
voyages to the region, it should do something useful like help patrol
the seas.''
Travel restrictions lifted
More recently President Obama fulfilled a campaign promise and lifted
restrictions on travel and money sent to relatives by Cuban Americans.
The president, who wants to help the Cuban people, asked Havana to
respond by reducing the tax it imposes on such remittances. ''No,''
Fidel Castro responded. So about a third of the money sent to Cuban
families, will be diverted to shore up the failed communist regime in
its newest time of need. Cuba has a liquidity crisis. Its sugar industry
is in shambles. Revenues from nickel mining and tourism are down, and
because world oil prices are down, the subsidies doled out to Cuba by
Chávez are in doubt.
Alleged spies arrested
The Castro brothers have also refused to release their political prisoners.
Still the enmity rages. Recently a former State Department official and
his wife were arrested on charges of spying for Cuba for 30 years. Not
only did the couple surreptitiously visit Fidel Castro in Cuba, they
were full of praise for Ana Belen Montes, a former high-ranking Defense
Intelligence Agency official also caught spying for Cuba. Montes is
serving a 25-year prison sentence.
Five other Cuban spies are also in American prisons. Havana declares
itself an ally of North Korea and Iran. Cuba remains on the U.S. list of
countries supportive of terrorism. American diplomats in Havana are
routinely harassed by the Cuban government, which blocks and delays
deliveries of supplies to the U.S. Interests Section and has broken into
the diplomatic pouch.
Having acknowledged there are such things as ''rogue states,'' it would
not be surprising if President Obama orders the State Department to stop
ignoring and rewarding the provocative and bad behavior of Havana and
its Western Hemisphere allies.
Frank Calzon is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba based
in Arlington, Va.
Don't reward Castro for Cuba's bad behavior - Other Views -
MiamiHerald.com (15 June 2009)
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/1097424.html
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