(CNSNews.com) – Cuba’s Raul Castro may not be at the table when President Obama joins 33 other Western hemisphere leaders at a summit in the Caribbean on Friday, but his left-wing allies intend to use the event to promote the communist-ruled nation’s cause.
Cuba has not been invited to the fifth Summit of the Americas meeting in Trinidad and Tobago because its government is not democratically elected – a condition for participation set when the U.S. first launched the hemispheric initiative in 1994.
Nonetheless, Cuba’s supporters, led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega and Evo Morales of Bolivia, will ensure that Cuba – and specifically the almost-50-year-old U.S. embargo – features prominently at the meeting. The official theme focuses on the financial crisis, energy security and the environment.
Obama’s recent easing of Cuban travel and financial restrictions has been dismissed in the region as inadequate.
Morales has announced he will introduce a resolution at the gathering demanding an end to the U.S. “blockade.” A Nicaraguan deputy foreign minister told reporters in Managua that Ortega would also raise the issue and demand that the embargo be lifted.
And Chavez has been the most outspoken critic, accusing the U.S. of violating Cuba’s rights, citing the embargo, Cuba’s nonattendance at this weekend’s summit, and its continued exclusion from the Organization of American States (OAS), the summit organizers. Havana was expelled from the body in 1962.
“It would be unfortunate if the principal theme of this meeting turned out to be Cuba,” Jeffrey Davidow, special advisor to Obama for the Summit of the Americas, told a State Department briefing last week.
“We would prefer, obviously, to focus on what we have been preparing for, but there is no effort on our part to try to stifle conversation on any topic.”
Davidow said the U.S. hoped that Cuba would at some point change in ways that would allow it “to rejoin the inter-American community. But it will not be at this summit.”
A draft of the final Summit of the Americas declaration does not include references to Cuba. Davidow said negotiations on the document had been completed.
According to Venezuelan media reports, however, the Venezuelan and Nicaraguan governments were this week still holding up final agreement on the text, unhappy about provisions highlighting the role of the OAS in the upholding of human rights and resolution of differences among states.
Chavez, who has refused to endorse parts of previous Summit of the Americas declarations, has a rocky relationship with the OAS. He has described it as Washington’s “Colonial Office” and has threatened on occasion to withdraw over its criticism of some of his policies.
Fidel Castro in a newspaper column Tuesday rubbished the notion that Cuba even wanted to be readmitted to the “loathsome” OAS, saying the organization “has not rendered any single service to our peoples.”
Bilateral meeting?
The summit will provide Obama with his first opportunity to make good on his campaign assertion that he would be willing to meet with leaders of countries hostile to the U.S., including Venezuela.
(Asked at the time whether he would “without precondition, during the first year of your administration … [meet] with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea,” he replied in the affirmative, describing as “ridiculous” the notion that not talking to such countries was punishing them.)
At a White House briefing this week, Denis McDonough, director of strategic communications at the National Security Council, said Obama would be “looking for opportunities to have individual meetings with some of our friends” on the summit sidelines, but said he could not give further details.
Earlier, Davidow said in response to a question about the possibility of an Obama-Chavez bilateral meeting that the structure of the meetings – including one session with no-one other than the 34 leaders in the room – “offers ample opportunity for discussions amongst the presidents.”
One of many unresolved and sensitive issues is the expulsion last year of the American ambassadors in Caracas and La Paz.
Chavez declared Ambassador Patrick Duddy persona non grata last September, one day after Morales kicked out the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, Phillip Goldberg, alleging interference in his country’s internal affairs.
“When there’s a new government in the United States, we’ll send an ambassador, Chavez said at the time, adding that it should be “a government that respects Latin America.”
The U.S. is response expelled the Venezuelan and Bolivian ambassadors.
Davidow, himself a former ambassador to Venezuela and Mexico, said the administration would like to see the diplomatic relationship with both countries restored, but he did not think the issue would be “a principal point” for Obama at the summit.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a key regional leader sometimes upstaged by the strident Chavez, is viewed by some regional commentators and analysts as a figure who could play a mediating role at the summit.
Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said last week Brazil could help facilitate rapprochement between the U.S. and Venezuela, and voiced optimism that better relations were on the horizon.
Da Silva, described as a “moderate leftist,” has cordial ties with Venezuela. Invited to the White House last month, he was the first Latin American leader to meet with Obama. The two met again at the G-20 summit in London.
“I know how to move between political camps,” the Brazilian leader told a German publication last year, in reference to his warm relationships with the Castro brothers and with President Bush.