HAVANA (Reuters) – Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro said on Sunday the US trade embargo against Cuba must go, but he was mum on his brother Raul Castro’s recent offer to talk with Washington about “everything,” including political prisoners and human rights.
Castro’s comments in his latest column in Cuba’s state-run media were his first about the just-completed Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago.
Latin American leaders there pushed US President Barack Obama to end the Cold War trade ban imposed against Cuba in 1962.
Castro praised Obama for being “very intelligent,” but said he was “abrupt and evasive” when he answered questions about the embargo in a closing news conference on Sunday.
“I want to remind him of a basic ethical principal related to Cuba: any injustice, any crime in whatever time has no excuse to go on.
The cruel blockade (embargo) against the Cuban people costs lives, costs suffering,” he said.
Before the summit that began on Friday, Obama put small holes in the embargo by granting Cuban-Americans the right to travel freely to Cuba and send unlimited money to their relatives on the communist-ruled island.
Obama said he hoped Cuba would signal its willingness to move ahead by releasing political prisoners and cutting the amount it charges to change US dollars into Cuban convertible pesos.
