End Cuba embargo, leaders tell Obama
COSTA DO SAUIPE, Thursday
Latin American leaders have called on President-elect Barack Obama to lift the 46-year-old US embargo against Cuba as soon as he takes office.
The leaders of 33 Latin American and Caribbean nations said the unilateral enforcement of sanctions was “unacceptable” and said Washington must comply with UN resolutions condemning the embargo imposed against Cuba at the height of the Cold War in 1962.
Meeting in northeastern Brazil, they demanded the immediate lifting of measures taken in the last five years by President George W. Bush to toughen the embargo against Cuba, where Fidel Castro seized power in a 1959 revolution.
Mr Obama, who takes office on January 20, is expected to lift measures restricting cash remittances and travel to Cuba by Cubans living in the United States. But he has said will keep the embargo to encourage democratic change in the one-party state.
Cuba has won more friends in Latin America in recent years as centre-left and socialist presidents have been elected and US influence has declined sharply.
Showing their greater independence from the United States, the region’s leaders welcomed Cuba into the so-called Rio Group of Latin American and Caribbean countries
Cuban President Raul Castro, who took over earlier this year after his brother Fidel Castro fell ill, was feted by fellow leftists at the summit in Brazil.
The Latin American leaders also pressed for a bigger say in world affairs, saying the global economic crisis was not of their making but was undermining their countries’ stability.
They were fiercely critical of rich countries as the source of the crisis which has slowed growth in the region as commodity prices fall and foreign capital dries up.
“We have an important part to play in building a new international economic and political architecture,” said Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the summit host. (Reuters)
