Posted on 06/10/2003 2:52:10 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
SANTIAGO, Chile -- Secretary of State Colin Powell called on Western Hemisphere nations Monday to help "hasten the inevitable democratic transition in Cuba" and protest a recent wave of arrests and executions by President Fidel Castro's government.
Powell, raising the Cuba issue in a forum long reluctant to debate it, told the 34-nation Organization of American States: "The people of Cuba increasingly look to the OAS for help in defending their fundamental freedoms against the depredations of our hemisphere's only dictatorship."
Powell reminded the gathering of its past commitments to democracy, including the 2001 Inter-American Democratic Charter.
That document "declares that `the people of the Americas have a right to democracy.' It does not say that the peoples of the Americas, except Cubans, have a right to democracy," he said.
Many nations of the OAS, which suspended Cuba's membership in 1962, are opposed to discussing Castro's human rights record without also debating the four-decades-old U.S. embargo of the island.
Only half the group's membership has signed on to a U.S.-backed declaration criticizing Castro's crackdown on dissidents. Caribbean countries lead the opposition to the declaration.
But worldwide sentiment appears to be shifting slightly after the Cuban regime earlier this spring imprisoned 75 dissidents and executed three men for hijacking a ferry they were to take to the United States.
"I think Castro made a very big mistake," said a senior OAS official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
While Castro still garners support in some nations in the region, if the Bush administration abandons past practice and makes a major push for action by the OAS, "I think they may get something," the senior official said.
The European Union, which has advocated engagement with Havana, announced last week that it would cut back on high-level visits to Cuba and invite dissidents to EU functions.
Citing that move, Powell said Sunday while on his way to Chile: "I think the rest of the world is now starting to take note of Castro's increasingly poor human rights behavior."
Foreign Minister Bill Graham of Canada, which generally opposes U.S. policy toward Cuba, said that while the OAS might not be the right forum to discuss Castro's regime, "we do need to find ways" to deal with the crackdown.
Powell and his colleagues met at the OAS General Assembly in Chile to discuss the future of democratic and free-market economic reforms. Both are under siege in many countries from citizens whose lives have only gotten harder a decade after the reforms took root.
The United States, which has pushed democracy, free trade and economic liberalization in Latin America, is the target of much of the criticism. Leaders and citizens also criticize President Bush for abandoning early promises of intense partnership with the region to focus on the Middle East and terrorism.
After recurrent economic crises in Mexico and Argentina, and the 1990s currency meltdowns in East Asia, which badly hurt Latin American economies, "The optimism about markets just faded away," the senior OAS official said at a briefing.
He blamed the backlash in part on the Bush administration's refusal to intervene early in Argentina's devastating economic crisis.
Powell will stop in Argentina briefly today to confer with its new president, Nestor Kirchner.
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