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Comment IPS Features |
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Editor's Note: The following information was received from the Cuban Committee for Democracy and we pass it along to you to consider without comment. CCD critical of Commission’s Recommendations May 6, 2004 (Miami, FL) - The Cuban Committee
for Democracy (CCD) today criticized the recommendations made by the
President's “Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba” as
detrimental to the welfare of Cuban families, and a recipe for more
confrontation between the governments of Cuba and the U.S. “These recommendations are a total fantasy
developed by high ranking officials in the Bush Administration who
have no idea what Cuba is really like,” stated Ricardo Gonzalez,
president of the CCD. If
carried out, “they will only help to bring about more misery to the
Cuban people.” The Administration's obsession with regime
change in Cuba is blinding it to the fact that most Cuban Americans want
to help their families in the island.
“To say that one visit every three years constitutes
‘promotion of family ties and humanitarian relief for the Cuban
people’ indicates how little this Commission understands the
importance of family in the Cuban culture,” said Gonzalez. “The Commission's recommendations add up to a
fanciful dream of a post-Castro Cuba which carries a heavy price to be
paid by Cuban families,” he added.
Gonzalez stressed the CCD’s belief that the
only way to arrive at a peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba is
through engagement. He said
the Administration's approach is to continue the failed policies of the
past four decades as a way to appeal to Cuban votes in Florida. “What the President and his Cuba advisers fail
to understand is that the Cuban American community has changed and does
not support the hard-line as it used to,” said Gonzalez.
He added that “these new measures will fail and come back to
haunt the Administration come November.”
Marlene
Arzola
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