Absurd US Reply to Cuban Offer

"The United States will be open to dialogue with Cuba, if it guarantees the protection of human rights," is the title* given by the newspaper El Nuevo Herald, voice of the Cuban-American extreme right in Miami, to an Agence France-Presse report on Dec. 24, 2013. "The U.S. government will be open to forging a new relationship with Cuba when the Cuban people enjoy the protection of fundamental human rights and ability to freely determine their own political future."

This was Washington’s flippant response — from "a high-ranking U.S. diplomat who requested anonymity" — to the repeated offer of dialogue made by President Raúl Castro to the incumbent in the White House in the closing speech for the eighth ongress' second regular session of the National Assembly of People’s Power — the Cuban parliament — on Dec. 21.

On that occasion, Cuba’s president stated that "as we were recently able to maintain certain exchanges on issues of mutual benefit between Cuba and the United States, we believe we could resolve other issues of interest and establish a civilized relationship between the two countries, just as our people, the great majority of American citizens and Cuban emigrants, desire."

"As far as we are concerned," stressed President Raúl Castro, "we have expressed on multiple occasions our willingness to maintain a respectful dialogue with the United States, on equal footing and without compromising independence, sovereignty and the self-determination of the nation. We are not requesting that the U.S. change its political and social systems, but neither will we agree to negotiate ours. If we truly want to advance bilateral relations, we must learn how to mutually respect our differences and become accustomed to living peacefully with those differences. Only under these circumstances can any of the above occur; otherwise, we are willing to endure another 55 years of the same situation."

At the closing of the seventh congress' 10th regular session of the National Assembly of People’s Power on Dec. 13, 2012, the Cuban president said it had been a few weeks since President Barack Obama’s second term of office had begun and that "although Cuba will never renounce the defense of its independence and self-determination, it does reiterate once more to the U.S. authorities its willingness to engage in respectful dialogue, based on extreme equality on all bilateral issues and, at the current time, our offer of cooperation on issues of common interest remains on the table, with neither preconditions, nor prior gestures."

The Cuban government’s offer of talks is nothing new. In fact, it can be said that this has been Havana’s unchanging position ever since the first official U.S. objections to the Cuban political process, following the triumph of the revolution in 1959, at which time its leader, Fidel Castro, traveled to Washington to hold discussions called to clarify Cuba’s willingness to maintain a respectful relationship, without any interference into the internal affairs of the parties.

What have changed over and over again have been the pretexts of the U.S. for rejecting the offer. Initially, it was the issue of nationalizing foreign property in Cuba, a core program of the revolution that affected several countries with nationals who possessed important industries or large farms on the island. All of these investors — except those from the United States, who were forbidden by their government to negotiate mutually acceptable compensation with the Cuban government in accordance with the rules of international law — arrived at satisfactory indemnification agreements, a fact that demonstrated that Washington was not seeking redress but rather confrontation.

Later came other evasions, in the form of objections by the U.S. that impeded the negotiation dialogue among the parties: Cuba’s relations with the Soviet Union, the Soviet military presence in Cuba, Cuban support for national liberation movements in Latin America — several of which are governments today — the Cuban military presence in Africa in support of national liberation movements and the fight against the execrable apartheid. In recent times, the U.S. government has used the pretext of an alleged violation of human rights in Cuba. In light of the U.S. systematically violating human rights in the world today and even operating a torture center for unconvicted prisoners at a military base on territory in the Cuban province of Guantanamo, which it has been operating illegally for a century, these charges against Cuba are unreasonable and, at the very least, absurd.

*Editor's note: This is the opening line of the article. The actual headline says, "The United States Will Dialogue with Cuba if It Improves Human Rights." The original article can be found here: http://www.elnuevoherald.com/2013/12/24/1642404/eeuu-dialogaria-con-cuba-si-mejoran.html.