Thursday, December 14, 2006

by Antonio Rodriguez

WASHINGTON, USA (AFP): The top US diplomat for Latin America Wednesday indicated the United States had yet to find a reformer in the communist Cuban government, but did not flatly rule out dialogue with it in a context of political opening.

"We have not been able to detect there the emergence of any political figure that could be reformist," said Tom Shannon, the State Department's top diplomat for Latin America.

"Once (Fidel Castro) goes, the successor government is going to have to chart out some kind of path into the future. There are no clear signals of what that path is going to be," Shannon added, noting: "We don't see any significant possibility of change of any kind until Fidel is gone."

Raul Castro, who has been filling in for his brother Fidel since the long-time Cuban president underwent intestinal surgery in July, made an appeal for talks with Washington on December 2 in a speech to troops in Havana marking Fidel's 80th birthday.

Since Raul Castro's rise to leadership, Shannon said, "We have seen in the appointments to ministries and the government positions, the return of hard-line people committed to Fidelism, and we've seen during this kind of transfer of power, again, a hardening of the regime and an attempt of the actors in the regime to present themselves in a very orthodox fashion."

"We have not been able to detect in there the emergence of any political figures that could be reformist," he stressed.

"Our engagement with Cuba has to be part of a change process that facilitates a democratic transition. We are attentive to what is happening in Cuba, to what would happen after Fidel Castro passes from the scene. When we engage, it has to be part of a democratic change," Shannon added.

Shannon's remarks were a shade less confrontational than those of department spokesmen earlier this month.

On September 2 in Havana, Raul Castro reached out to the United States and proposed negotiations to end more than four decades of strained ties.

"Let me take this opportunity to express our willingness to settle the long US-Cuba disagreement at the negotiating table," Raul Castro said.

Cuba has long expressed a willingness to talk with the United States if respected as an equal, but Fidel Castro seldom reached out in such public terms as used by Raul.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack at the time flatly ruled out any talks with the communist regime.

"I don't see how that really furthers the cause of democracy in that country where you have dialogue with a dictator-in-waiting who wants to continue the form of governance that has really kept down the Cuban people for all these decades," he said.

"The dialogue that should be taking place is not between Raul Castro and any group outside or any country outside of Cuba (but) with the Cuban people and talking about a transition to a democratic form of governance in that country," he said.

Fidel Castro has not been seen in public since July 26, the day before his surgery. Washington has repeatedly suggested that the transition to a new leadership is already under way.

  Most popular articles: viewed, printed and e-mailed

  Printable version