Latin America Trip Will Test Obama’s Push for Ties With Cuba

Latin America Trip Will Test Obama's Push for Ties With Cuba
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVISAPRIL 8, 2015

WASHINGTON — President Obama's push for a historic opening with Cuba
faces its first major test this week as he travels to a summit meeting
in Latin America, where he hopes to highlight momentum toward ending a
half-century of isolation from the island nation.

Even before Mr. Obama was to board Air Force One on Wednesday, White
House officials signaled that the administration was nearing a decision
on whether to remove Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.
That left open the possibility that the president could use the Summit
of the Americas in Panama to clear a major sticking point in the effort
to restore diplomatic ties between Washington and Havana.

The move would pave the way for the reopening of embassies that have
been closed for more than 50 years, a crucial step in the easing of
tensions between the United States and Cuba that Mr. Obama announced in
December.

Mr. Obama will travel first to Jamaica before going to Panama for the
summit meeting, which begins Friday. Cuba is attending the meeting for
the first time after being expelled from the Organization of American
States in 1962 at the behest of the United States. Mr. Obama and
President Raúl Castro of Cuba will face each other in official meetings
for the first time, interacting at summit events and on the sidelines of
the gathering.

Although White House aides said no formal one-on-one meeting between the
two men was scheduled, top Cuban and American officials are expected to
hold talks, building on months of behind-the-scenes diplomatic
negotiations. And with or without any change in the terrorism
designation, the meeting will offer a stage for a powerful moment and
some closely watched body language.

"When you have two countries that haven't really spoken to each other
like this in over 50 years, you have a lot of issues to work through,"
said Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser.

Mr. Rhodes said the State Department, which oversees the list of state
sponsors of terrorism, "is likely in the final stages" of reviewing
Cuba's inclusion in it at the president's direction.

Mr. Obama strongly suggested this week that he was inclined to remove
the designation, which has limited Cuba's access to banking services
around the world and, more symbolically, relegated the nation to a
rogues' gallery that includes Iran, Sudan and Syria.

"The criteria is very straightforward," Mr. Obama told NPR on Monday.
"Is this particular country considered a state sponsor of terrorism —
not, do we agree with them on everything, not whether they engage in
repressive or authoritarian activities in their own country."

"I think there's a real opportunity here, and we are going to continue
to move forward on it," Mr. Obama said of opening relations with Cuba.

His trip, during which he will discuss energy cooperation with Caribbean
nations in Jamaica and visit the Panama Canal, is emerging as a crucial
milestone in his effort to turn the page on a Cold War-era grudge that
his advisers say has led to policies that are ineffectual and harmful to
American interests.

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"It made no sense that the United States consistently essentially made
the decision to isolate ourselves from the rest of the Americas because
we were clinging to a policy that wasn't working," Mr. Rhodes said. "We
would anticipate that this does help begin to remove a significant
impediment to having a more constructive engagement in the hemisphere,
because we demonstrated an openness to engage all the countries in the
Americas, to include Cuba."

Julissa Reynoso, who served from 2009 to 2012 as a top State Department
official in charge of Cuba policy, said, "When I was involved, having
one or two meetings with Cuban government officials per year was a
significant event, so the fact that these folks are talking continuously
is in itself an important thing."

But Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona and a leading proponent of
re-establishing ties with Cuba, said he thought that Mr. Obama would
have acted by now to remove Cuba from the terrorism list. "Movement on
that front would really signal that we're pushing ahead," Mr. Flake said
in an interview, adding that the opening of embassies could not be far
behind.

Ms. Reynoso, a partner at the law firm Chadbourne & Parke who is a
former ambassador to Uruguay, said the Cuba opening could be a game
changer for American relationships throughout Latin America.

"It's an important historical moment for the entire region," she said.
"Folks are going to be very focused on the body language, the gestures,
any form of contact" between Mr. Obama and Mr. Castro.

If Mr. Obama recommends that Cuba be removed from the terrorism list, he
will have to send a report to Congress certifying that Cuba has not
supported international terrorism in the last six months. Congress would
have 45 days to review the removal of the designation, and it could
either do nothing, in effect allowing the removal to occur, or try to
block it with a joint resolution.

Cuba was first put on the list in 1982 because of its support of leftist
insurgents in Latin America.

The most recent State Department report, issued in 2013, said Cuba had
"long provided safe haven" to Basque separatists from the group known as
ETA and to the FARC rebels in Colombia, and had harbored "fugitives
wanted in the United States." But the report said that Cuba's ties to
ETA had become "more distant" and that the nation was trying to broker a
peace agreement between FARC and the Colombian government.

Source: Latin America Trip Will Test Obama's Push for Ties With Cuba -
NYTimes.com -
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/world/latin-america-trip-will-test-obamas-push-for-ties-with-cuba.html?_r=0