US PRESIDENT Barack Obama has sought to avoid a rift with his Latin American colleagues over Cuba ahead of his arrival at the first continent-wide summit of the Americas in four years.
Many of the other leaders at the 34-nation summit, which continues in Trinidad and Tobago this weekend, have stepped up calls for the US to end its near half-century embargo on Havana.
As tension has escalated, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez has threatened not to sign the final communique.
In an attempt to forestall such criticism, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said late on Thursday that the US was ready to talk to Cuba in the wake of Mr Obama’s decision this week to remove restrictions on Cuban Americans travelling and sending remittances to the island. “We stand ready to discuss with Cuba additional steps that could be taken,” she said in a pre-summit stop in Haiti.
The US says it is unwilling to lift the trade embargo itself if Cuba does not move towards democratic reform.
Cuba’s president, Raúl Castro, has also declared this week he is willing to begin discussions. “We have sent word to the US government in private and in public that we are willing to discuss everything – human rights, freedom of the press, political prisoners,” he said in Venezuela, where he attended a left-wing gathering of leaders hosted by Mr Chávez.
Mr Castro is not attending the Trinidad summit, which groups together the continent’s democracies, but despite – or because of – his absence, Cuba is set to become the dominant theme at the event.
The risk for Mr Obama is that he will appear isolated amid criticism from Latin American leaders.
Even before the summit began, he stood by awkwardly at a press conference in Mexico where Felipe Calderón, the country’s centre-right president, said the embargo was part of the reason why “the Cubans have become impoverished”. Such barbs are difficult for Washington to deal with given Mr Obama’s promise, in an opinion piece released on the eve of the summit, to overcome the tensions of the Bush era and pursue “sustained engagement with our neighbours”.
The US has also been exercised by Mr Chávez’s threat not to sign the communique. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009