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Gorbachev
soft on Castro
Michael Putney. Posted on Wed,
Oct. 08, 2003 in The
Miami Herald.
I had dinner with Mikhail Gorbachev the other
night and can report that, at 73, the former Soviet
president hasn't lost a step and is an engaging
dining companion.
He was in town to speak to the National Summit
on Cuba-Florida, a group of moderate-to-liberal
Cuban Americans, academics and think-tank types
who want to get rid of the travel ban and lift
the embargo. Of course, that's precisely what
Gorbachev wants, too. ''President Bush, lift the
embargo,'' Gorbachev said at a news conference,
consciously echoing Ronald Reagan's call for him
to tear down the Berlin Wall.
The former Soviet president called the embargo
an anachronistic relic of the Cold War that gives
Castro an excuse for his own failed economic policies
and a justification for cracking down on dissidents.
''It would be great for the U.S., the last superpower,
to take the first step to lift the embargo,''
said Gorbachev.
I asked why the Bush administration should lift
the embargo only months after 75 Cuban human-rights
activists and others were jailed for little more
than disagreeing with Castro? He said that the
United States is large and rich, Cuba small and
poor. Great nations can and should act magnanimously.
''An end to the embargo,'' he predicted, "could
well result in the release of those people and
other things.''
That prediction is as loony and improbable as
those made by Jimmy Carter when he visited Cuba
last year. What is it about being out of office
that has turned these once-powerful men into incorrigible
softies when it comes to Castro? Gorbachev, in
fact, said that Castro isn't a ''monster'' and
is someone who always kept his word: ''A reliable
partner,'' he said.
Hey, if some sugar daddy were underwriting my
country's flagging economy and political misadventures
I'd try to stay on his good side, too.
While the summit was under way in one ballroom
at the Biltmore Hotel, a counter-meeting was under
way in another. This a U.S.-Cuba seminar was held
at the urging of Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart
under the auspices of UM's Institute for Cuban
and Cuban-American Studies, whose work largely
is funded by federal grants.
Evidently Díaz-Balart just couldn't let
those ''Castro lovers'' and ''communists,'' as
another high-ranking seminar participant described
them, steal the spotlight from the hard-liners.
The seminar also provided a high-visibility venue
for Roger Noriega, the administration's new top
man for Latin America. ''President Bush is the
best ally that Cubans could have,'' Noriega told
an unusually reserved group of about 200, most
of them Cuban Americans. They sat on their hands
through many of Noreiga's applause lines, maybe
because most of them amounted to little more than
political pandering.
They did like it, however, when he called those
attending the competing meeting ''newcomers''
to the debate. " . . . just as Castro is
in terrible trouble, they fly in to propose that
we liberate Cuba by scrapping our policy and shoveling
unilateral concessions and tourist dollars at
the dictator.''
In fact, many of those attending the summit are
Cuban Americans from South Florida or academics
and State Department alumni with a long history
of Cuba-policy involvement. Snapped retired Marine
Corps Gen. Jack Sheehan, 'I kind of take exception
to the concept of 'newcomer' because when he was
a little kid going to a grammar school in the
Midwest, I was walking the hill lines of Guantánamo
Bay with a rifle during the middle of the Cuban
Missile Crisis.''
How ironic. Competing conferences that were supposed
to show that Miami could simultaneously host people
of good will but sharply different points of view
on U.S. Cuba policy only underscored how deeply
they're divided. Hard-liners still have the upper
hand, but I think that the anti-embargo group
is gaining ground.
As Rep. Bill Delahunt, D- Mass., told Gorbachev
at dinner: ''U.S. policy on Cuba is going to change.
It may be months or years, but it will change.''
That certainly leaves a lot of wiggle room, but
Rep. Delahunt is right. If hard-liners want to
have a say in how it changes, they might want
to sign up for next year's summit. Organizers
say that there will be one -- and that everyone
will be welcome.
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