It is time for the US Congress to end the restrictions that for more than half a century have prevented most Americans from visiting Cuba, a bipartisan group of senators said on Tuesday.
The lawmakers, at a news conference where they were joined by trade and human rights groups, also made clear that their proposal to allow travel should be a first step toward breaking down economic and trade barriers between the two countries.
The travel embargo, said Senator Byron Dorgan, a Democrat, is a “failed policy that has failed for 50 years.”
Lawmakers, backed by business and farm groups seeing new opportunities in Cuba, have been trying for years to chip away at the trade and travel bans imposed after former Cuban president Fidel Castro took power in Havana in 1959.
They have made little headway because of strong political resistance led by Florida’s influential Cuban-American community.
But the situation has change in the past year with an Castro turning political control over to his brother Raul and the election of US President Barack Obama, who like other Democratic presidents is more open to increasing nonpolitical contacts with the Cuban people.
The Obama administration, while steering clear of ending the trade embargo, this month backed changes making it easier for Cuban-Americans to visit and send remittances to their relatives on the island. It also is thought the administration could take other steps, such as revising rules that have impeded farm and medical sales to Cuba, before a summit of Latin American countries in Trinidad next month.
The Dorgan bill is cosponsored by Senator Richard Lugar, top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, among others. It would prevent the president from stopping travel to Cuba except in cases of war, imminent danger to public health or threats to the physical safety of US travelers.
Representatives Bill Delahunt, a Democrat, and Jeff Flake, a Republican, have an identical bill in the House of Representatives with 120 co-sponsors.
Dorgan said there are sufficient votes in both chambers to pass the legislation, although there is certain to be lively opposition. Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat and the son of Cuban immigrants, slowed confirmation of several administration officials and passage of a major spending bill because that bill contained the changes in rules on Cuban-American travel.
Cuban-born Senator Mel Martinez, a Republican, said he would continue to oppose the legislation.
“This is the time to support pro-democracy activists in Cuba, not provide the Castro regime with a resource windfall,” he said.
Supporters stressed that Cuba is the only country in the world to which the US bans travel: there are a few exceptions, such as for journalists or humanitarian visits. They said open travel would make Cubans more favorable to American people and ideas.
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
FOREST SITE: A rescue helicopter spotted the burning fuselage of the plane in a forested area, with rescue personnel saying they saw no evidence of survivors A passenger plane carrying nearly 50 people crashed yesterday in a remote spot in Russia’s far eastern region of Amur, with no immediate signs of survivors, authorities said. The aircraft, a twin-propeller Antonov-24 operated by Angara Airlines, was headed to the town of Tynda from the city of Blagoveshchensk when it disappeared from radar at about 1pm. A rescue helicopter later spotted the burning fuselage of the plane on a forested mountain slope about 16km from Tynda. Videos published by Russian investigators showed what appeared to be columns of smoke billowing from the wreckage of the plane in a dense, forested area. Rescuers in
‘ARBITRARY’ CASE: Former DR Congo president Joseph Kabila has maintained his innocence and called the country’s courts an instrument of oppression Former Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) president Joseph Kabila went on trial in absentia on Friday on charges including treason over alleged support for Rwanda-backed militants, an AFP reporter at the court said. Kabila, who has lived outside the DR Congo for two years, stands accused at a military court of plotting to overthrow the government of Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi — a charge that could yield a death sentence. He also faces charges including homicide, torture and rape linked to the anti-government force M23, the charge sheet said. Other charges include “taking part in an insurrection movement,” “crime against the
RSS