Community | April 01, 2011 | 10 comments

Comrade Carter..."We welcomed each other as old friends"

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congoboy
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Former US President Jimmy Carter aimed to hit all the right points on a three-day trip to Cuba. He sat with revolutionary icon Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl, and met today with leading Cuban dissidents, calling attention to the human rights and political issues that have long been at the center of stalled US-Cuba relations.But Mr. Carter was unable to resolve a key sticking point between the Castro regime and Obama administration: the release of jailed US contractor Alan P. Gross.

While that, in itself, was enough to cast Carter's trip as a disappointment, analysts say Mr. Gross's release would not likely have provided the impetus for a major turning point in relations that were severed 50 years ago.Naturally, his visit raised hopes that this might represent an ever-so-small but significant breakthrough for democracy. Within months, Fidel Castro dashed those hopes. The Cuban “black spring” of March 2003 saw the round-up and imprisonment of 75 dissidents on flimsy, capricious charges designed to stifle any hint of political freedom or accommodation. It was a vicious blow to the aspirations of millions of Cubans and a testament to the enduringly repressive and capricious nature of the hard-line Castro regime.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/03/31/2144019/cubas-dissidents-are-not-alone.htm...
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  2. tags:
    Cuba,  Castro,  Jimmy Carter
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