U.S. hints that it won’t oppose Cuban participation in Summit of the Americas

U.S. hints that it won't oppose Cuban participation in Summit of the
Americas
BY JIM WYSS JWYSS@MIAMIHERALD.COM
12/10/2014 8:19 PM 12/10/2014 8:19 PM

In an apparent reversal of decades-long policy, Washington will not
stand in the way of Cuban participation in the next Summit of the
Americas, Secretary of State John Kerry suggested on Wednesday.

In a speech marking the 20th anniversary of the first summit in Miami,
Kerry said it was time to "get beyond the perennial debate of attendance
— who comes — and focus on the substantive issues at the summit that
will be crucial to ultimately building a better future in the Americas."

Kerry didn't mention the communist island by name, but the comments
seemed to indicate that the United States is conceding to demands by
Latin America and the Caribbean that Cuba — the only country to be
excluded from the event — be allowed to attend the region's most
influential summit.

Even so, Kerry said human rights and democracy will be at the top of the
agenda and that dissidents will have a voice at the April summit in Panama.

"We are insisting that this summit include meaningful and direct
participation not just from leaders in government, but from businesses,
human rights defenders [and] other credible civil society voices
representing all the nations of our hemisphere," he said.

Before Kerry spoke in Washington, several members of the Ladies in White
opposition movement were arrested during a demonstration in downtown
Havana to commemorate Human Rights Day.

In a speech that highlighted progress, Kerry hailed a region that has
seen booming growth and pulled more than 73 million people out of
poverty in the last 20 years.

Just a few decades ago, the "hemisphere seemed to land in the headlines
only for the wrong reasons — violence, repression, corruption, narcotics
— you name it," he said. "Few people could at that time imagine a
brighter future, let alone think that we were actually going to be able
to turn the tide."

But he also took aim at the hemisphere's autocrats, accusing nations of
undermining democracy by squelching the media and civil society groups
and perpetuating their administrations by scrapping term limits.
Nicaragua and Venezuela have both done away with term limits and Ecuador
is mulling doing so.

"That distorted vision believes that elections are the end of the
democratic journey," he said. "It sees a free, open and inclusive
society as a threat to the power of the state."

Hours after his speech, the U.S. House passed a bill that would deny
visas and freeze the assets of Venezuelan authorities accused of abuses
during anti-government protests earlier this year. The Senate passed the
bill on Monday.

Congress sent a clear message that the U.S. will not tolerate impunity
or violations of human rights in Venezuela, U.S. Rep. Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) said in a statement Wednesday.

"I call on President (Barack) Obama and the State Department to
vigorously enforce the sanctions against Venezuelan officials swiftly,"
Ros-Lehtinen said.

This is a delicate time for the United States to engage in finger
pointing, and Kerry seemed to acknowledge it. On Tuesday, the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence released a much-anticipated report
highlighting alleged the CIA's cruel interrogation techniques.

"We hold ourselves accountable to an ugly, horrible period, and we
should be proud of our ability to do that," Kerry said.

He also said the United States needs to do more to reduce its addiction
to narcotics and curb the flow of guns into violence-plagued Mexico.

"Too many Americans are the consumers of drugs that transit Mexico and
Central America," he said, "And that trade will exist as long as there
is demand."

The remarks come as former President Bill Clinton is hosting business
and political leaders from the region Thursday at the University of
Miami. The Future of the Americas summit will focus on investment,
education and health, and employment — and organizers said that one of
the hopes is to provide the region's leaders actionable goals for the
Panama gathering.

Kerry is scheduled to travel to Peru on Thursday where he will attend
the U.N. climate talks before continuing on to Colombia. In his speech,
he called climate change one of the region's greatest challenges and
opportunities.

The $6 trillion energy market is ripe for innovation and holds the key
to the environment, he said. By overhauling the energy sector, "We can
actually deal with the problem of climate change, make a lot of money,
create a lot of jobs," he said.

But all those issues will likely be obscured if Cuba attends next year's
summit. Meetings between U.S. and Cuban authorities are so rare that
when Obama and Cuban leader Raúl Castro shook hands earlier this year in
South Africa, it dominated headlines.

The United States and Canada have long maintained that a meeting of the
region's democracies was no place for the hemisphere's only
dictatorship, but they've faced push-back, even from staunch allies.

Among the obstacles in the U.S.-Cuba relationship is the fate of Alan
Gross, the USAID subcontractor who has served five years of a 15-year
sentence on the island for bringing satellite communications equipment
into Cuba as part of a democracy-building program.

"We've been in conversations about how we can get Alan Gross home for
quite some time," Obama told Fusion network on Tuesday. "We continue to
be concerned about him."

The United States wants to see more from Cuba, the president said. "I've
made very clear that the policies we have in making remittances easier
for Cuban families and making it easier for families to travel, have
been helpful to people inside of Cuba, but the Cuban government still
needs to make significant changes."

Kerry said it was key that the next summit be "inclusive."

"If there's one thing that I've learned in my years in public life," he
said, "it is that all societies are stronger when all of the citizens
have a say and stake in the success of that society."

Miami Herald Staff Writers Mimi Whitefield and Jacqueline Charles
contributed to this report.

Source: U.S. hints that it won't oppose Cuban participation in Summit of
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