Powell's OAS focus: Cuban repression

Miami Herald Posted on Mon, Jun. 09, 2003 BY NANCY SAN MARTIN nsanmartin@herald.com

Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sunday praised the European Union's recent decision to review its bilateral relationship with Cuba and said repressive action against dissidents on the island would be highlighted in his speech today before the Organization of American States.

Powell, who spoke to reporters in Puerto Rico while traveling to Chile for the OAS meeting, did not outline specific U.S. action in response to the crackdown.

But he said he would tell the OAS assembly today that Cuba remains out of step with the rest of the Western Hemisphere.

''I will point out once again that [Fidel] Castro's Cuba remains an anachronism in our hemisphere and it is not getting better,'' Powell told reporters, according to the news agency Agence France-Presse.

The European Union announced last week that it was reexamining its relationship with Havana in response to the recent arrests and harsh prison terms against government opponents and the execution of three men who had tried to hijack a passenger ferry across the Florida Straits.

The 15-nation bloc also unanimously approved limiting high-level bilateral government visits, reducing the profile of member states' participation in cultural events, and inviting Cuban dissidents abroad.

''The rest of the world is now starting to take note of Castro's increasingly poor human rights behavior,'' Powell told reporters.

Some analysts said Powell's speech at the OAS would result in little, if any, concrete measures.

''The OAS meeting will be full of declarations that aren't going to mean much,'' Eduardo Gamarra, director of the Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University, told The Herald in a telephone interview. ''The United States is probably trying to secure a more universal policy'' against Cuba, Gamarra said, but Latin American nations would not be swayed to take such action.

Latin America has only limited bilateral relations with Cuba, compared to the European Union, which is Cuba's largest trading partner and foreign investor. Canada leads the hemisphere in foreign investment in Cuba, but in Latin America, Venezuela has the most significant partnership.

The main theme of the OAS meeting will be the strengthening of democracy in Latin America.