US President Barack Obama is trying to make positive changes in the US, but is being fought at every turn by right-wingers who hate him because he is black, former Cuban leader Fidel Castro said yesterday.
In an unusually conciliatory column in the state-run media, Castro said Obama had inherited many problems from his predecessor, former US president George W. Bush, and was trying to resolve them. But the “powerful extreme right won’t be happy with anything that diminishes their prerogatives in the slightest way.”
Obama does not want to change the US political and economic system, but “in spite of that, the extreme right hates him for being African-American and fights what the president does to improve the deteriorated image of that country,” Castro wrote.
“I don’t have the slightest doubt that the racist right will do everything possible to wear him down, blocking his program to get him out of the game one way or another, at the least political cost,” he said.
Castro, who writes regular commentaries for Cuba’s state-run media, has criticized Obama, complimented him occasionally and said that he is watching him closely to see if he means what he says about changing US policy toward Cuba.
His latest column comes during a visit to Cuba by New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson that has stirred speculation that he may try to push US-Cuba relations forward.
Richardson has been a diplomatic trouble-shooter in nations with which the US has poor relations. In 1996 he negotiated with Castro for the release of three Cuban political prisoners.
A spokeswoman in Santa Fe, New Mexico, said Richardson was to arrive in Havana on Monday and return home on Friday on a trip officially billed as a trade mission for New Mexico farm products.
A statement said the governor would be accompanied by several New Mexican officials whose primary aim is increasing the state’s agricultural sales to the communist-led island.
Richardson, who was US ambassador to the UN and energy secretary under former US president Bill Clinton, served as a special envoy on diplomatic missions to countries such as North Korea, Myanmar and Cuba.
In 1996, he met with then-Cuban leader Fidel Castro and negotiated the release of three political prisoners.
“His visit is intriguing because he has a record as a diplomatic troubleshooter. He knows Cuba, and he could play the same role for the Obama administration as [former] president Clinton just played in North Korea,” said Cuba expert Phil Peters of the Lexington Institute in Washington.
Earlier this month, Clinton went to North Korea on what was called a private humanitarian trip and procured the release of two US journalists jailed on charges they entered the country illegally.
US President Barack Obama has said he wants to “restart” long-hostile US-Cuba relations and has eased the 47-year-old US trade embargo against the island.
But he has said further lifting of the embargo will occur only if Cuba makes progress on political prisoners and human rights. Fidel Castro’s brother Cuban President Raul Castro has said he is happy to discuss these issues but is unwilling to make any unilateral concessions.
US farm products are exempt from the embargo, which was imposed in 1962 in an attempt to undermine Castro, who transformed Cuba into a communist state after taking power in a 1959 revolution.
The New Mexico press release did not say with whom the delegation would meet. Richardson, it said, is paying his own expenses during the trip.
Castro, 83, ran Cuba for 49 years after taking power in a 1959 revolution, but stepped down last year so Raul Castro, his younger brother, could succeed him.
He has not been seen in public since undergoing intestinal surgery in July 2006, but still plays a behind-the-scenes role in government and maintains a high profile through his writings.
He appeared on Cuban television on Sunday for the first time in 14 months meeting with Venezuelan students.
He seemed in good health as he smiled and talked with the students in an appearance that some experts believe was aimed at shoring up support for his brother and the government at a time when Cuba is in deep economic crisis.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS