U.S. officials announced a plan Monday to spend $80 million over the next two years to strengthen Cuba’s struggling opposition movement as part of a series of measures aimed at ending Cuban President Fidel Castro’s one-party rule.
The Bush administration also pledged to tighten existing sanctions, improve efforts to break Cuba’s “information blockade” against its citizens and intensify a campaign to diplomatically isolate the country.
The measures are part of a report issued by the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, the White House’s top policymaking body for Cuba that is co-chaired by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, a Cuban-American.
“We are offering support for the efforts of Cubans to prepare for the day when they will recover their sovereignty and can select a government of their choosing through free and fair multiparty elections,” Rice told reporters in Washington as she unveiled the report.
There was no immediate response from Cuba to the 93-page document, which is a follow-up to the commission’s first report in May 2004.
`A true threat of aggression’
But Cuban officials last week denounced a draft report nearly identical to Monday’s final version as a plot by the U.S. to annex Cuba and reverse what they describe as the revolution’s achievements in health, education and other areas.
“We are facing a true threat of aggression,” Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon said.
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Although the commission said it is “a time for bold, decisive action” against Castro, critics said the report offers little that is new and merely endorses ongoing U.S. measures that have failed to bring about change.
“This is about the U.S. trying to provide the illusion of activity to hide the fact that there has been no progress on their objectives,” said Daniel Erikson, director of Caribbean programs at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank.
One opposition activist on the island said the measures outlined in the new report could provide Cuban authorities with a cover for intensifying the repression against them.
“It gives the Cuban government evidence to call us mercenaries and put us in prison,” said Miriam Leiva, a prominent dissident. “The government is always looking for excuses to crack down on us.”
Yet, while the report offers few new proposals, it adopts a more moderate tone than its predecessor on several key issues, experts said.
The report emphasizes the need for national reconciliation among Cubans at home and abroad while pledging the U.S. would not support “any arbitrary effort to evict them [Cubans] from their homes” in the post-Castro era.
Such a pledge is important because many island residents fear returning Cuban-Americans would claim homes and other property taken by Castro after he seized power in 1959.
The commission made clear that the U.S would not provide humanitarian and other assistance to a post-Castro government unless it moved swiftly toward multiparty elections.
“U.S. support will not be made available to a government that adopts economic or other policies that suggest change but which do not actually achieve the goal of dismantling the repressive regime and making a full transition to democracy,” the report said.
Bush intensifying sanctions
Philip Peters, a Cuba expert at the Lexington Institute, a Washington-area policy group, said the strict aid conditions would limit U.S. influence by keeping America on the sidelines while other nations engaged with Cuba.
“The report says that we are opposed to anything but complete system change even though we applaud China and Vietnam,” Peters said. “We are asking Cuba to take big steps and make radical changes, but we will not support small steps in that direction.”
Since 2004, President Bush has intensified financial, travel and other sanctions against the island in an effort to weaken the Cuban government.
At the same time, U.S. officials have spent tens of millions of dollars supplying everything from food and clothing to fax machines and computers to opposition activists. Cuban authorities have imprisoned activists who accepted such aid.
Yet, while the commission portrays Cuba’s opposition as growing in influence, experts say the dissidents remain small in number, fractured politically and largely unknown on an island where they have no access to the state-run media.
The Bush administration’s efforts to squeeze Cuba economically through tightened sanctions also have failed given that leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is providing Cuba with more than $1billion a year in discounted oil, financial credits and other assistance.
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