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.
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