"Cuba Should Be Re-admitted to the OAS, Says Insulza!!

[magbana]

"Cuba Should Be Admitted to Local Body, Insulza Says (Update1)
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By Joshua Goodman

March 30 (Bloomberg) -- The Organization of American States should take steps to readmit Cuba, 47 years after it was banned from the group, OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza said.

Insulza, in an interview in Medellin, Colombia, said the 1962 OAS resolution that banned Cuba from the Washington-based assembly because of its links to communism, China and the Soviet Union no longer makes sense.

“One of the countries has disappeared and the other is buying a lot of U.S. Treasuries,” Insulza said at the Inter- American Development Bank’s annual meeting. “Please, if they’re going to be excluded, let’s come up with some better criteria.”

Insulza’s comments come as U.S. President Barack Obama is preparing to travel next month to Trinidad and Tobago for the fifth Summit of the Americas, where regional leaders are expected to reiterate their call for him to end the U.S.’s trade embargo against the communist island.

The U.S. has no plans to lift the embargo, Vice President Joe Biden told reporters over the weekend after a meeting in Chile with self-declared progressive heads of state.

“We think the Cuban people should determine their own fate and that they should be able to live in freedom and with some prospect of economic prosperity,” Biden said. “But Cuba is not the biggest challenge facing the hemisphere, the biggest challenge facing the hemisphere is the economy.”

El Salvador, Costa Rica

Cuba is the only Latin American or Caribbean nation excluded from proceedings at the 35 member-nation OAS, and the U.S. is the only country in the Americas that doesn’t have full diplomatic relations with the country. El Salvador and Costa Rica reestablished ties this month with Cuba, the only country in the region that isn’t a democracy.

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro said Biden’s comments show that the U.S. is increasingly isolated in the region in its insistence on maintaining the embargo.

Biden’s “pitiful complaints are regrettable, especially when there isn’t a single Latin American or Caribbean government that doesn’t see this antediluvian measure as a holdover from the past,” Castro said yesterday, according to an e-mailed statement sent from the Cuban embassy in Caracas.

Insulza said Cuba’s readmission into the OAS should come after serious study and dialogue. Its return would likely follow its entry into other organizations such as the IDB and the Pan American Health Organization, he said.

“Cuba’s fundamental problem is the U.S. embargo, not whether or not it belongs to specific organizations like the OAS,” said Insulza, adding that he didn’t expect the issue to dominate discussions at the April 17-19 Summit of the Americas.

To contact the reporters on this story: Joshua Goodman in Rio de Janeiro at [e-mail]
Last Updated: March 30, 2009 20:58 EDT "
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=ajsmQoleQLwc&refer=latin_america

[Judi Lynn]

1. Jose Miguel Insulza has a powerful voice, greatly respected.Hope his comments will be considered. nt

[EFerrari]

2. It's pretty clear that Latin American leaders are making a bid

to solidify the independence they've gained from the US in the last decade or so. They may even have a cushion of a couple more years while the new administration is busy cleaning up Bush's horrible mess in the Middle East.

I'm not encouraged, though, having just been to Clinton's site at State and found that just last week, one of her people put up a pdf rehearsing the Bush position on Venezuela. . .