WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is ruling out any changes in its Cuba policy — including lifting a five-decade trade embargo — deriding Fidel Castro’s brother and heir apparent, Raul, as “dictator lite.”
Despite having openly wished for Castro’s demise and the end of his rule for years, U.S. officials said Tuesday that Castro’s decision to step down on his own terms leaves little hope for real democratic transition in communist Cuba during President Bush’s final year in office, although it may open options for his successor in the White House.
Led by Bush, a chorus of officials expressed hope that Castro’s departure would spark fundamental changes for the Cuban people. But they also said they doubted that would happen under Raul Castro and said there was little chance the nearly 50-year-old U.S. embargo on Cuba would be lifted.
“They’re the ones who suffered under Fidel Castro,” Bush told a news conference in Rwanda. “They’re the ones who were put in prison because of their beliefs. They’re the ones who have been denied their right to live in a free society. So I view this as a period of transition, and it should be the beginning of the democratic transition in Cuba.
“Eventually, this transition ought to lead to free and fair elections — and I mean free, and I mean fair — not these kind of staged elections that the Castro brothers try to foist off as true democracy,” Bush said. “The United States will help the people of Cuba realize the blessings of liberty.”
Even as U.S. lawmakers suggested Castro’s retirement should set off a review of U.S. policy, senior State Department officials in Washington said there would be no lifting of the embargo, which has been the centerpiece of American policy toward Cuba since it was first imposed in 1960 and strengthened in 1962.
“I can’t imagine that happening anytime soon,” said Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte.
The ailing Castro, 81, who has called the embargo “criminal” and claims its impact has run into the tens of billions of dollars, announced earlier Tuesday he would not accept another term in office when parliament meets to elect a new president this weekend.
Castro has been on the sidelines of the Havana leadership since July 2006, when he underwent complicated surgery for an intestinal ailment and temporarily handed off governing responsibilities to his brother Raul Castro, 76.
It wasn’t clear from Castro’s resignation letter whether the younger Castro would emerge as president after the parliamentary meeting or whether the leadership would pass to a new generation.
Speculation, and the hopes of many Cubans hungry for more economic opportunity, has focused on Vice President Carlos Lage, a 56-year-old physician by training who was architect of the modest reforms adopted in the early 1990s. Those changes, enacted after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of the nearly $8 billion in annual subsidies Moscow provided the island nation, allowed some Cubans to open private businesses such as restaurants, pensions and repair shops.
Castro outlasted nine U.S. presidents who, with some minor policy adjustments, have steadily ramped up pressure on Cuba. At least two secretaries of state, Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell, said publicly while in office that they hoped “the actuarial tables” would catch up with the aging Cuban leader, who was a persistent thorn in Washington’s side.
The top three U.S. presidential candidates all said Washington should look for ways to encourage democratic reforms in Cuba, steps that could lead to normalizing U.S. relations with Cuba later on.
Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama and Republican John McCain called for the release of Cuban political prisoners and said the U.S. should look for ways to encourage democratic reforms in Cuba.
In Congress, more than 100 lawmakers from both sides of the aisle signed a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urging a “tough-minded review” of current U.S. policy toward Cuba, which they said had left the United States “without influence at this critical moment” on the island.
“After 50 years, it is time for us to think and act anew,” they said.
Meanwhile, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Miami-area Republican who was born in Havana, said Castro’s resignation was irrelevant because his regime had already “done great harm to the suffering Cuban people.” She urged the administration to look into indicting both Castros for Cuba’s 1996 shoot-down of a humanitarian relief plane.
Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., who is of Cuban descent, said Castro’s resignation “is not the cause for celebration that some would believe. This does not represent the replacement of totalitarianism with democracy. Instead, it is the replacement of one dictator with another.”
Still, Raul Castro has repeatedly offered to improve relations with Washington. He has hinted he favors greater, if still limited, economic freedom. And he’s already allowed more, if limited, public criticism of the government.
Since taking the provisional presidency, he has extradited three U.S. fugitives, reduced the number of Cuban political prisoners by more than 20 percent and refrained from imposing the death penalty in two military mutinies where firing squads seemed likely. He also said Cuban forces would recapture any terrorism suspects who escape from the Guantanamo prison.
The Los Angeles Times contributed to this report.
Likely successor
Raul Castro, 76, is expected to succeed his brother as Cuba’s president Sunday. He is currently the first vice president of the Council of State and Council of Ministers, minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and second secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba.
Joined the revolutionHe was arrested and released, and he regrouped with surviving rebels in Mexico. He returned to Cuba in 1958 to establish a second front in the mountains.
After the revolution
He was heavily involved with military assistance from the Soviet Union.
