AP : Bush Touts Cuban Life After Castro

Bush Touts Cuban Life After Castro

By BEN FELLER | October 24, 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) — 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 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.

Still, Bush seemed emboldened by even the possibility of regime change in Cuba. An ailing Fidel Castro has not been seen in public since July 2006.

"Now is the time to support the democratic movements growing on the island," Bush said in a State Department speech, with family members of Cuban political prisoners seated behind him on stage. "Now is the time to stand with the Cuban people as they stand up for their liberty. And now is the time for the world to put aside its differences and prepare for Cubans' transition to a future of freedom and progress and promise."

Bush appealed to other nations to chip in with money and support, casting a long-standing political struggle in moral terms.

"The dissidents of today will be the nation's leaders tomorrow. And when freedom finally comes, they will surely remember who stood with them," he said.

The pro-democratic movement that Bush lauded, in perspective, is small. Members of Cuba's small organized opposition are better known outside than inside the country. None of the dissident leaders has any kind of significant following on the island, except for Oswaldo Paya, founder of Cuba's Christian Liberation Movement and promoter of the Varela Project, a pro-democracy signature-gathering effort that the government later shelved.

Beyond his immediate audience of diplomats and analysts, Bush sought to reach Cuba's people directly.

To ordinary citizens, he said: "You have the power to shape your own destiny. You can bring about a future where your leaders answers to you." To Cuban military and police, Bush tried to go over Castro's head: "You may have once believed in the revolution. Now you can see its failure."

In response, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told a news conference that Bush's plans were "equivalent to the re-conquest of Cuba by force" and said they "give an idea of the level of frustration, of desperation and of personal hatred toward Cuba."

He said most Cubans back the revolution led by Fidel Castro, making the idea of an internal uprising a "fantasy" and "politically impossible." His remarks echoed those of the ailing Castro himself, who wrote in newspaper columns this week that "Bush is obsessed with Cuba."

The U.S. cut off diplomatic ties with Cuba in 1961, two years after Castro led an armed revolution that drove out U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. The U.S. deems Cuba to be a state sponsor of terrorism and has long sought to isolate it through trade and travel restrictions that Bush has intensified.

Bush's speech drew praise for its aims but criticism, too, on grounds that he hadn't offered much new.

Bush proposed the offer of expanded Internet access to Cuban students, and an invitation to Cuban youth to join a scholarship program. He also called on the creation of the international fund, built on foreign donations, to help Cuba build a free-market society one day.

Vicki Huddleston, who served as the top U.S. diplomat in Havana under Presidents Clinton and Bush, said continuing to isolate Cuba will not work.

"The president, in his commendable desire to make Cuba free, has unwittingly made it more likely that both Raul and Fidel will celebrate the revolution's 50th anniversary in January 2009," Huddleston said. "And Fidel — aging and infirm — will probably be around to celebrate having outmaneuvered two Bush administrations and 10 American presidents."

Lawmakers of both parties have proposed easing the trade and travel restrictions, which they claim have done little good; Bush says doing so would only strengthen a dictatorship.

Over the years, the U.S. government has spent many millions of dollars to support Cuba's opposition, with much of the funds never directly reaching the dissidents on the island and instead winding up funding opposition support organizations in Miami and Washington.

Meanwhile, Castro has become a model for a growing left-wing movement in Latin America, most notably in Venezuela and Bolivia.

Associated Press writers Anita Snow and Will Weissert contributed to this story.