President Bush's Cuba stance criticized

Castillo de los Tres Reyes del Morro (Morro Castle (fortress), built in 1589 to guard the eastern entrance to Havana bay).

Call for change draws critics

Staff and wire reports

October 25, 2007

President Bush, trying to loosen Fidel Castro's nearly half-century hold on power, blistered Cuba's communist regime Wednesday and challenged allies to help foster a democratic uprising or risk the shame of staying silent.

Bush's first major address on Cuba in four years, delivered on the 45th anniversary of the blockade begun during the missile crisis, offered no change in U.S. policy and only modest proposals that even he acknowledged would likely be rejected by the island's rulers. With Raul Castro running Cuba on his ailing brother's behalf, it was unclear whether Bush's latest effort would have any effect.

In Miami, some Cuba analysts said they were disappointed with Bush's announcement. If the White House wants to offer Cubans a bigger window on the world, said sociology professor Lisandro Perez, of Florida International University, it should allow U.S. tourists and businessmen to travel there. That would be more effective than pushing Internet access, he said.

Perez also suggested any initiative bearing the White House seal was likely to provoke a stronger push in the other direction. The Cuban government has cited U.S. support for Cuban dissidents, for example, in accusing some of working as U.S. agents.

"To define these things as part of a U.S. policy will actually make it harder for them to happen," Perez said.

Tony Zamorra, president of the Foundation for the Normalization of U.S.-Cuba Relations, went a step further, saying such calls for change often serve to strengthen the Castro regime by whipping up nationalism.

"Bush will get positive reviews within a very narrow group of the Cuban-American community," he said. "I think this thing is seriously irrelevant."

Bush's speech at the State Department in Washington comes less than a week before an annual vote by the United Nations on the U.S. trade and travel embargo on Cuba. Despite repeated votes against it, the United States has persisted in limiting visits to the island by U.S. citizens. Cuban-Americans are permitted to travel back to their homeland once every three years.

In Havana, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque on Wednesday sharply rebuked Bush, saying the president harbors a "personal hatred" toward Cuba and his renewed strategies mark the most aggressive effort yet to cause subversion and instability.

"The words of the United States' president announce an escalation without precedent in the United States government's policy against Cuba for more blockades, more subversion, more efforts to isolate Cuba," Perez Roque said.

Perez Roque criticized Bush's emphasis on freedom, not stability, as the operative word for Cuba's future.

"Cuba understands these words as an irresponsible act that gives an idea of the level of frustration, desperation and personal hatred that President Bush has against Cuba," Perez Roque said.

Bush's plan to bring democracy to Cuba amounts to an effort to bring about "regime change" that includes "the use of force," he said.

In one of his columns this week, Fidel Castro, who has not been seen in public since undergoing surgery in July 2006, said Bush is intent on a "reconquest" of Cuba, a charge that Perez Roque reiterated Wednesday during a news conference after Bush's speech.

Perez Roque singled out Bush's appeal to the Cuban military, in which the American leader charged that Castro's socialist revolution has failed. Said Perez Roque: "I have a message for the president of the United States: You're delirious."

Staff Writer Ruth Morris and Michael Martinez of the Chicago Tribune contributed to this report, which includes information from The Associated Press.