Thursday, June 4, 2009

Cuba: The right decision

"The lifting of Cuba's 1962 suspension was the result of weeks of back-room brokering, plus an hours-long private meeting in San Pedro Sula with foreign ministers, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It ended Wednesday with the OAS' leftist bloc accepting a paragraph that refers to Cuba abiding by ''practices, purposes and principles of the OAS,'' words that Cuba's allies had just the night before flat-out rejected, sources close to the negotiations said. . . . Retracting Cuba's suspension does not mean the hemisphere's last communist country automatically rejoins an organization that prides itself in being the region's leading promoter of human rights and democracy. The resolution lifting Cuba's suspension says Cuba has to take the next step by initiating dialogue with the OAS and its participation would be ''in conformity with the practices, purposes and principles of the OAS,'' a key paragraph that Washington lobbied to include."

http://www.miamiherald.com/457/story/1080539.html

If and as Cuba moves towards democracy, Cuba may move towards reintegration into the international community. Once more, the positive accomplishments are coming from Clinton's State Department, not Obama's White House.

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