Cuban Parliament President Ricardo Alarcon dismissed US President Barack Obama’s recent overtures to Cuba and said Saturday for the first time that the new US administration’s stance was “the continuation of an illegal, unjustifiable and failed policy.”
Obama has suggested it may be time for a new beginning with Cuba and the White House authorized unlimited travel and money transfers for Americans with relatives in Cuba. But his administration has said it would like Cuba to respond by making small political and social changes to its single-party communist system.
“In other words, Cuba must change and behave in accordance with Washington’s wishes,” Alarcon said at the close of a Cuban academic conference in Canada.
“That attitude is not only the continuation of an illegal, unjustifiable and failed policy, it is also the consequence of a profound misconception, a false perception of itself that lies as the foundation of the US role in the world,” he said.
The US has long sought what it considers real change from Cuba in human rights, free speech, free markets and democratic government.
Last month, Cuban President Raul Castro said Cuba was willing to discuss “everything” with the US, leading to hopes that a door was opening to a new relationship.
But former Cuban president Fidel Castro insists that Cuba should make no concessions in return for better US ties.
The Obama administration has said it has no plans to lift the embargo which bans nearly all trade with Cuba. The island’s government blames those sanctions for frequent shortages of food, medicine, farming and transportation machinery and other basics.
Alarcon said Obama’s gestures were dictated by growing domestic demand and did not amount to much.
“Essentially he lifted newer restrictions that [former US president] George W. Bush had imposed on Cuban-American travelers,” Alarcon said.
He said Obama should exercise his authority and immediately free five convicted Cuban spies. The so-called Cuban Five are communist agents who were convicted of espionage in Miami in 2001.
The ringleader was implicated in the death of four exiles killed when Cuban military fighters shot their planes down off the island’s coast in 1996.
The three-day forum at Queen’s University examined the significance of the 50th anniversary of the Cuba revolution but very few anti-Castro views were heard.
A small number of Cuban emigres demonstrated outside the site of Alarcon’s speech.
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