US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton risks walking into what one analyst calls a Latin American minefield over ties with Cuba when she visits El Salvador and Honduras this week.
The issue will hover over today’s inauguration of Salvadoran president-elect Mauricio Funes in San Salvador and could cause a rift at the Organization of American States (OAS) general assembly in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, tomorrow.
US officials could not even rule out the possibility of Clinton’s skipping the OAS meeting altogether if negotiators fail to agree on terms for bringing Cuba back within the 35-member organization’s fold.
Washington wants Cuba to free political prisoners and respect political freedoms for it to participate fully in the OAS, saying it is holding the body to the democratic principles enshrined in its own 2001 charter. Other OAS members say that Cuba can be nudged toward democracy once inside the OAS.
Many members point out that the reason for Cuba’s suspension in 1962 — its role in the Cold War-era Soviet bloc — does not apply today as the bloc no longer exists.
Even though Cuba itself rejects the OAS, analysts said, many countries want to use the issue to either push for a lifting of the decades-old US embargo on Havana or for their own private agendas, such as to embarrass the US.
Since US President Barack Obama took office in January, he has raised hopes among many of his southern neighbors that he will soon lift the embargo, even if he insists that Cuba first undertake democratic reforms.
“This is going to be a complicated challenge for her [Clinton] to deal with,” said Michael Shifter, an analyst for the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank.
“I sense the Obama people are a little bit nervous. I think they’re aware that it’s a minefield, Cuba,” said Shifter who pointed to the risk of a rift within the OAS.
And Clinton’s stop in San Salvador “creates a certain dynamic,” Shifter said, because the presence of a Cuban leader at the inauguration will mark the start of El Salvador’s own moves toward full diplomatic ties with Cuba.
It will expose the US even more because, under the previous US-backed right-wing government, El Salvador was the last Latin American countries not to have normal relations with Cuba, he said.
Asked if Clinton would meet with Cubans officials at the inauguration, a senior US official said on the condition of anonymity: “We’re not at the stage right now where the secretary would meet with Cuban officials.”
OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza, as well as radical leftist Venezuela, Nicaragua and Honduras, were driving the agenda to have Cuba readmitted to the OAS, Shifter said.
Instead of having Cuba as the burning issue, he said, the Obama team would have preferred to highlight a new era of US cooperation with leftist but pragmatic democratic governments like those in El Salvador, Brazil and Chile.
Chris Sabatini, an analyst with the Council of Americas, said the new administration is trying to show that the “tent of democracy is broad” even while a few leftist radicals remain in the region.
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