A string of leaders from South America to the Caribbean have made clear they will use the April 17-19 Summit of the Americas to lobby President Barack Obama to end the longstanding US embargo against the communist-ruled island.
Ambassador Jeffrey Davidow, White House adviser for the summit, said the gathering in Trinidad and Tobago was an opportunity for the new US president to engage and work with the region on strategic issues like tackling the economic crisis, energy solutions and common security threats.
“I would think it would be unfortunate to lose the opportunity for this hemisphere … by getting distracted by the Cuban issue,” Davidow said at a conference in Washington looking ahead to next week’s summit which will bring together Obama and more than 30 other heads of state and government.
Obama, who took office in January, has promised to ease the 47-year US trade embargo on Cuba and seek talks with its leaders. US officials make clear the embargo will not be entirely lifted, to keep up pressure for reforms in Cuba.
Cuba, which was suspended from the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1962 because of Havana’s alignment with what was then the communist bloc led by the Soviet Union, will not be participating in the Trinidad meeting.
Davidow acknowledged the “highly contentious” Cuba question was likely to “come up in some way” at the summit, even if it was not on the formal agenda.
But, signalling limits to any US policy change and in a pointed counter to worldwide opposition to the US embargo on Cuba, expressed annually at the United Nations, the US diplomat called Cuba the “odd man out” in the hemisphere.
“Keep in mind that this meeting in Trinidad is a meeting of 34 democratic states,” Davidow said, restating Washington’s objections to Cuba’s one-party communist system.
In recent weeks, regional leaders ranging from the summit host, Trinidadian Prime Minister Patrick Manning, to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez have loudly proclaimed their condemnation of what they term an “obsolete” US isolationist policy toward Cuba.
While sharing this view, OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza said this week that Cuba’s return to the hemispheric group would not however be resolved at the Trinidad summit.
Analysts said many of Obama’s peers in the hemisphere could view his response on the Cuba issue as a test of how serious he might be in announcing a new, more collaborative relationship with Latin America, which opposes the embargo with one voice.
