Spain wants EU-Cuba agreement in first half of 2010

BRUSSELS (AFP) – Spain will seek to establish a new bilateral agreement on EU-Cuba ties, including human rights, in the first half of 2010 when it will hold the EU’s rotating presidency, its foreign minister said Saturday.

Spain’s Miguel Angel Moratinos stressed his country’s intentions after a European Union meeting with Cuba, represented by its foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez.

The talks were the fourth of their kind since Europe established a political dialogue with Havana last year.

Spain has been in the forefront of efforts to boost relations with Cuba. Madrid wants to see an end to the European Union’s Common Position on Cuba, adopted in 1996, which calls for human rights and democracy progress as a condition for normal relations with the European bloc.

The Spanish government “hopes to initiate during its presidency,” in the first half of next year “a bilateral cooperation framework” with Cuba, Moratinos told reporters after the meeting in Brussels.

The current common position “is only the unilateral position of the European Union,” he underlined, whereas under a bilateral deal Havana would have to make commitments, including on human rights.

He promised that if the Spanish initiative went ahead “there will be a strong chapter” on human rights.

Saturday’s meeting was also attended by EU Development Commissioner Karel De Gucht, and Frank Belfrage, state secretary for foreign affairs for Sweden, which currently holds the EU presidency which it will hand over to Spain at the end of the year.

Cuban minister Rodriguez agreed with Moratinos that ties with Europe were heading in the right direction, saying he was convinced that “the majority of EU nations are in favour of standardising relations.

Rodriguez reiterated however that the EU’s common position is an “insuperable obstacle” that should be scrapped as soon as possible.

The EU suspended ties with Cuba after a major roundup of 75 dissidents in March 2003, but resumed aid cooperation in 2008.

Spain’s policy on Cuba shifted in 2005 after Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero came to power the previous year. His conservative predecessor, Jose Maria Aznar, had adopted a policy of isolating the Communist island.

In 2007 Spain and Cuba, a former Spanish colony, renewed ties.

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Restrictions hurting exports to Cuba

Agweek.com: Agricultural sales to Cuba would have been as much as one-third higher in 2008 if U.S. restrictions on financing of the exports and travel by Americans to Cuba had been lifted, a top U.S. International Trade Commission member said.
Speaking at a Center for International Policy conference promoting easier U.S.-Cuban relations, Jonathan Coleman, the head of the ITC agricultural and fisheries division, said if the restrictions had been lifted, U.S. sales would have risen from $707 million to between $925 million and $1.2 billion.
Coleman said the study assumed the lifting of all the complicated arrangements for payment required under the 2000 Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act that allowed the sale of U.S. agriculture products to Cuba for the first time since the embargo on trade was established in the early 1960s.
Coleman also said the study assumed that if all travel restrictions had been lifted, 500,000 to 1 million Americans would have traveled to Cuba in 2008. Coleman said the statistics were an update of a larger study that the ITC, a federal agency that analyzes trade problems, had conducted in 2007 at the request of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont.
Missing opportunities Coleman said the increase in sales would have amounted to $225 million to $475 million and that the U.S. percentage of the Cuban import market would have risen from 38 percent to between 49 percent and 64 percent. He also said that requiring Cuba to buy letters of credit through banks in third countries and requiring cash payment before shipment make the U.S. products 2.5 percent to 7 percent more expensive than if Cuba were able to use normal banking channels. Some analysts have said that U.S. producers have fared better with cash sales than if U.S. firms could grant credit arrangements to Cuba because Cuba has been late in paying for its agricultural imports from other countries. But Coleman said his analysis did not include that issue.
Daniel Griswold of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, noted that Cuba is the No. 6 customer for U.S. agricultural products in Latin America and that sales to Cuba, a country with 11.5 million people are higher, than sales to Brazil, which has 200 million people.
If the restrictions were lifted and Cuba spent the same share of its GDP on farm exports as other Caribbean islands, “we
could be exporting $1.5 billion a year, more than double our current exports,” Griswold said.
USA Rice Federation CEO Betsy Ward said U.S. rice producers have lost sales to Cuba because Vietnam has extended credit to Cuba for rice purchases.
Several farm group representatives at the conference they hope President Obama’s recent overtures to Cuba lead to an easing of trade and travel restrictions.
“Resuming normal commercial relations with Cuba is the top priority for our organization,” Ward said, noting that the United States was the No. 1 rice supplier to Cuba in 1961 before the embargo was imposed.
Alan Tracy, president of U.S. Wheat Associates, a wheat promotion group, said he was disappointed Obama’s statement did not include an easing of Bush administration regulations requiring that Cuba pay cash in advance prior to shipment. But Tracy said farm groups still are looking for a legislative vehicle to push for more liberalization.
Tracy said since 2001, Cuba has bought U.S. what valued at $383 million, but that if commercial relations had been normal, Cuba would have bought wheat valued at $1.1 billion.
Wayne Smith, a former chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, said he is working with Cuban and U.S. officials in
Galveston, Texas, and Louisiana to set up a better system to exchange information on hurricanes.
Two diplomats from the Cuban Interests Section in Washington attended the conference, but said they were there as observers and declined to comment.

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33 Cubans come ashore near power plant

HOMESTEAD, Fla. — Florida Power & Light reported to nuclear regulators that 33 Cubans landed in the cooling canals of the Turkey Point nuclear power plant on Thanksgiving.

The report indicates that at 1:28 p.m. Thursday a member of the Cuban group called the Turkey Point control room saying they had landed in the canal area with 29 adults and four children.

The control room then called plant security, “who located and assumed control over the Cuban nationals without incident.” Security called Miami-Dade police for assistance. Police arrived at 2:25 p.m., which then called U.S. Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Telephone calls to Border Patrol were not immediately returned.

FPL said in an e-mail that the plant site was not affected in any way.

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Cubadisco 2010, the greatness of Cuban music

ACN: Country music will be on the spot, the wealth of this genre is to be promoted.

Country music will be on the spot, the wealth of this genre is to be promoted.

Ciro Benemelis, president of the International 2010 Cubadisco Festival, the highpoint of national music industry, declared that the event will be a special moment to show the wealth of Cuban country music.

According to declarations made in this city, he said that popular parades, colloquiums, workshops in art schools, album presentations and the longest singing of the world all over the country, will distinguish the event, whose Awarding Gala will take place in Havana, on May 15, 2010.

To revise and re-edit the country repertoire with arrangements for non-traditional frames –such as the symphonic and the chamber- will make the 14th edition shine, declared Benemelis, who invited the improvisers from every country to participate
in the event, to highlight cultural expressions of rural countries.

From CUBADISCO 2010 onwards children will have a permanent space in the festival and during the edition there will be colloquiums organized in the artistic education centers and in coordination with art instructors to show them the identity values of country music.

The festival will have a honor committee, among whose members stand out important keepers and specialists, such as María Teresa Linares, Adolfo Alfonso, Celina González and Inocente Iznaga González (El Jilguero de Cienfuegos).

The festival has been a very important contribution for the development and promotion of Cuban album industry. It widened its categories from the introduction of new technologies to award the DVD format, documentaries and video-clips.

The image and the sound of the national album are currently competing in more than 25 categories, which are evaluated by a committee made up by important musicians, critics and other specialists.

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Cuba defends key points on climate change

UNITED NATIONS (PL).— Prior to the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, Cuba has reiterated to the United Nations the need to adjust current standards of production and consumption and move towards a truly sustainable economic model.

Human survival requires an energy revolution at a worldwide level, confirmed Pedro Núñez Mosquera, Cuba’s permanent representative to the UN, during an informal meeting of the General Assembly.

The diplomat presented what he described as “eight truths” that cannot be circumvented or suppressed with respect to climate change, the first of which lies in exchanging methods of production and consumption for other sustainable ones and putting into practice an energy revolution on a worldwide scale.

Another reality is one which obliges the implementation of a new regime with respect to commitments to rigorously reduce emissions on the part of developed countries and adopt a series of actions in the fields of finance and the transference of technologies to developing nations.

A further issue is the industrialized nations’ responsibility to comply with the climate change convention’s commitments and the rejection of initiatives in an attempt to evade their duties in relation to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Later in his speech, the Cuban representative underlined the demand for greater participation on the part of developing countries in global actions to mitigate climate change, in accordance with the principle of common, but distinct, responsibilities, and their respective abilities.

In that context, he noted that, at the present time, we cannot attempt to impose commitments linked to the reduction of emissions on those states, victims of the negative consequences of the unjust and unequal international economic order and the consequences of climate change.

Núñez Mosquera stated that, prior to the meeting in Copenhagen, the developed countries are not demonstrating a firm political will to reduce emissions at a level proportional to their historic and current responsibilities.

Nor are they contributing the necessary resources and technologies with which underdeveloped nations would be able to play a stronger role in confronting the phenomenon, he commented.

The Cuban ambassador emphasized that achieving a just and balanced agreement in this area is still possible “if we approach the negotiation process with a new political attitude. Permitting the perpetuation of egotism and irresponsibility is ethically and politically unacceptable.”

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Chávez concludes visit to Cuba; meets with Fidel and Raúl

Granma: HUGO Chávez Frias, president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, concluded a visit to Cuba on Tuesday night by embracing President Raúl Castro at José Martí International Airport.

During his non-official visit on November 24, Chávez lunched and conversed with Fidel and, in the afternoon, met with Raúl Castro, who had previously received him on his arrival at Havana’s international airport, for discussions on their cooperation, and was bade farewell that same evening by the president of the Councils of State and Ministers.
As always, the Bolivarian president’s visit was much appreciated by Cuba. The meetings took place in the fraternal environment that characterizes relations between the two peoples and their governments. Important issues of an international nature were covered, in particular the ALBA Summit scheduled to take place in Havana this December, as well as the progress of their wide-ranging and fruitful bilateral links, which constitute an example of collaboration in solidarity.

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Send army of tourists to Cuba

Postandcourier.com:

Last week a congressional hearing room was filled with angry anti-Castro rhetoric as the opponents of lifting the U.S. embargo on doing business with and traveling to Cuba expressed their views. The opponents have it wrong, even as the inflexible and out-of-touch Cuban government hands them ammunition for their cause.

Cuban President Raul Castro is holding a military and propaganda exercise this week to prepare for an American military invasion of the island.

This quaintly intransigent stance, coupled with not-so-quaint police beatings of dissidents, gives ammunition to anti-Castro diehards in the United States who want a continued hands-off policy instead of the Obama promise of engagement.

If anything, the Obama administration’s position suffers from an excess of caution. President Obama, in answer to questions recently put to him over the Internet by Cuban dissident blogger Yaoni Sanchez, said he wants more contacts with the Cuban people and government but demands “actions by the Cuban government” to improve human rights as a first step.

The Cuban government’s answer? Sanchez and her husband were both severely beaten this month by secret police. She needed a crutch to get around, according to the husband’s account.

President Obama has effectively put control of the evolving relationship with Cuba in President Castro’s hands. That is a grave error.

The 50-year U.S. freeze on Cuba is just as outdated as Cuban fears of a new Bay of Pigs invasion. Cuba trades freely with Europe and Asia, and with U.S. farmers. But the Cuban government skims off the profits, leaving ordinary Cubans longing for better times. They are, by all accounts, utterly disaffected from their government and want a voice of their own. Large-scale American tourism would raise both their incomes and their desire for freedom.

Dropping U.S. restrictions on Cuban trade and travel would be a challenge to Raul Castro, not a boon.

He rightly fears an American invasion, not by arms, but by an army of tourists. It could mean his downfall.

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Cubans scamper to avoid dreaded blackouts

HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters) — Cubans are scrambling to turn off lights and appliances and children are going door to door reminding them to do just that under a government threat of dreaded blackouts if energy consumption is not reduced through the end of the year.

The drive to reduce energy use appears aimed at saving foreign exchange, and not related to the lack of oil and generating capacity that caused up to 18-hour blackouts in the 1990s after the demise of Cuba’s patron the Soviet Union.

In easternmost Guantanamo province, neighborhoods, on a rotating basis, are abstaining for an hour in the evenings when consumption peaks.

“It is very important to save energy house by house. People know it is the only alternative to blackouts,” Guantanamo retiree Pedro Fernandez said in a telephone interview.

In various provinces grammar school children, organized into “click brigades,” were reported going door to door to remind residents to save power.

Cuba has been grappling with the global economic downturn, which has slashed revenues from key exports, dried up credit and reduced foreign investment.

The communist-run Caribbean nation also faces stiff US sanctions that include cutting access to international lending institutions, and it is still rebuilding from last year’s trio of hurricanes that caused an estimated $10 billion in damages.

The Cuban government controls all power generation and distribution and sells electricity at subsidized prices.

“We are taking exceptional measures, such as shutting off air conditioning and refrigeration in all state entities that do not stockpile medicines and food,” the deputy governor of central Villa Clara province, Jesus Martuste, told the official Radio Rebelde.

“We have not shut down production, only adjusted some in the name of efficiency,” he said.

End-of-year university breaks have been extended a week, street lighting significantly reduced in the capital and provinces, non-essential air conditioning and refrigeration turned off, and some production and services “adjusted” away from times of high demand, according to media reports and a telephone survey of six provinces.

“The choice is simple. Save or suffer blackouts, and that is a situation nobody wants to live through again,” Gloria Hernandez, an office worker in central Camaguey province, said in a telephone interview.

A Council of Ministers circular, dated Oct. 21 and which reduced government power allocations, termed the energy situation “critical” and called for “extreme measures” through December.

“The energy situation we face is critical and if we do not adopt extreme measures we will have to revert to planned blackouts affecting the population,” said the order, which was seen by Reuters.

All provincial governments and most state-run offices and factories, which encompass 90 percent of Cuba’s economic activity, were already ordered in June to reduce energy use by a minimum of 12 percent or face mandatory electricity cuts.

The situation is not as dire as in the 1990s because Cuba receives 93,000 of the 150,000 barrels of oil per day that it consumes from strategic ally Venezuela on preferential terms.

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100,000 signatures strong for Cuba travel

Yahoo:

A cyberspace petition started by the Orbitz travel site to open Cuba to American tourists now has more than its goal of 100,000 signatures, Orbitz says.

Petitioners express support via OpenCuba .org, which asks the U.S. government to restore the right for all its citizens to visit Cuba. It is the only nation that Americans are not allowed to visit (unless they have Cuban relatives or qualify for a special visa). An embargo was imposed 47 years ago after Fidel Castro came to power.

Congress is considering bills to open Cuba to U.S. travelers (the House Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing Thursday). The United States Tour Operators Association is among the legislation’s supporters.

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U.S. Travel to Cuba May Open up

Since the 1960s, by US law, they have been off limits to American citizens.

But, on Capitol Hill this week — debate over whether to lift the travel ban to the Communist-ruled island.

Democratic Congressman Howard Berman is Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

[Congressman Howard Berman, Democrat, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman]:

“Lifting the travel ban will benefit both U.S. and Cuban citizens. We need to let Americans be beacons of hope, they will bring freedom with them, let thousands of American visitors chip away at the Castro information monopoly with thousands of small cuts”

The United States has restricted trade with Cuba in what started as a Cold War policy to isolate former Cuban President Fidel Castro. U.S. President Barack Obama has said he wants to “recast” ties with Havana and has tried to take steps to ease the embargo.

Some Congressional Republicans argue sending U.S. tourists’ dollars to Cuba would only finance the regime.

Republican Congressman Dan Burton.

[Dan Burton, Republican Congressman]:

“We shouldn’t send any money down there, not a dime, except maybe for humanitarian purposes, until this regime is removed, they need democracy in Cuba.”

The debate came a day after Human Rights Watch released a report saying current President Raul Castro was crushing dissent like his brother Fidel.

Late Thursday, remarks by Obama appeared on the blog of dissident Cuban Yoani Sanchez.

Asked if he would be willing to travel to Cuba, Obama said he would never rule out a course of action that could advance the interests of the U.S. and the cause of freedom for the Cuban people.

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