BRASILIA, (Reuters) – Brazil said yesterday that the U.S. lifting of limits on family travel and remittances to Cuba was a good first step but that it should not require gestures from the Cuban government before dismantling trade sanctions against the island.
President Barack Obama on Monday ended travel and money transfer restrictions for Cuban Americans and allowed U.S. telecommunications firms to offer cellphone roaming and satellite radio and television to Cubans.
“It’s a small step in the right direction,” Foreign Minister Celso Amorim told reporters on Tuesday.
“It’s important that it be a first step and that (the United States) not wait for gestures from Cuba to be able to continue,” Amorim said. At the Summit of the Americas starting on Friday, several Latin American leaders will push for the return of Cuba to the hemisphere’s forums such as the Organization of American States, from which Havana was excluded in 1962 when it embraced Soviet communism at the height of the Cold War. Amorim said Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a moderate left-wing leader who often tries to mediate between Latin America and the United States, would raise the Cuban issue at the meeting, but without putting Obama in a corner.
“(Obama) needs to understand that the region wants the end of the embargo,” said Amorim. “Now, there is no interest in creating an (awkward) situation for President Obama,” he said.
The White House said it wanted to increase the flow of information to Cuba. Obama has said he is open for dialogue with Cuba’s leaders, but does not intend to lift the trade embargo until the one-party state adopts democratic reforms.
The Obama administration also does not want the April 17-19 Summit of the Americas to be dominated by the Cuba issue.
OAS chief Jose Miguel Insulza expressed caution this week, saying Cuba needed to show clearly that it was committed to democracy to be readmitted to the group. Cuba has been ruled by Fidel Castro and his younger brother, Raul, since a 1959 revolution.
