Advisers to the White House on faith-based issues, including ones involving the Catholic Church, said the two may discuss topics such as the U.S.-led Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and the pope’s May visit to the Holy Land, the U.S. embargo of Cuba, Syria and the plight of religious minorities around the world.

Secretaries of State John Kerry and Archbishop Pietro Parolin (State Department photo)

Will Pope Francis help President Obama do what he wants to do with Cuba?

Secretary of State Kerry visited the Vatican on January 14th to meet with his counterpart.  As reported in the Israeli paper Haaretz, he said:

"We talked also about Cuba and the need for respect for freedom of religion and freedom of, and respect for, human rights," Kerry told reporters after the meeting.

 

 "I raised the issue of Alan Gross and his captivity, and we hope very much that there might be able to be assistance with respect to that issue," he said.

 

“we have to be creative. And we have to be thoughtful. And we have to continue to update our policies” 

“We are committed to this human interchange, and in the United States we believe that our people are actually our best ambassadors. They are ambassadors of our ideals, of our values, of our beliefs.” 

(The Ambassador Challenges Her Former Boss)

 

How then can we expect to be the prime mover in the complex affairs of the world, if we lack the courage here at home to redefine U.S.-Cuban relations?

 

Change is in the hands of the president — and Cuban Americans. In his eulogy Obama said, “Nelson Mandela reminds us that it always seems impossible until it is done.”

 

   --Vicki Huddleston, former chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana (1999-2002), former deputy assistant secretary for Africa at State and at Defense, Miami Herald Op Ed

Lift the Cuban Embargo

 

Some Republicans and Cuban-American lawmakers are criticizing President Obama for shaking President Raúl Castro’s hand at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela. Their reaction to a gesture of common courtesy should come as no surprise given Washington’s senseless commitment to a failed 50-year policy toward Cuba.

 

     --THE EDITORIAL BOARD OF THE NEW YORK TIMES

 

(Obama's Goal?)

 

The handshake between President Obama and Raul Castro at Nelson Mandela's memorial service would have made the South African leader smile. It was the latest sign of a gradual thawing in relations between Washington and Havana after a frozen half-century.

 

It hasn't been easy. Obama favored diplomatic recognition and lifting the embargo as far back as when he was a state legislator in Illinois, and he has steadily eased restrictions on travel since taking office.

 

But many on the American right, especially octogenarian Cuban immigrants from the Bay of Pigs generation, have stubbornly resisted normalizing relations with Cuba. Now, though, it seems as if the process is developing a momentum of its own.

 

     --Tom Hayden, a founder of the new left and former member of the California State Senate, Los Angeles Times OpEd

Mandela offers an insurmountable example to Latin America and the Caribbean, which are currently moving towards unity and integration for the benefit of their peoples, on the basis of respect for diversity, and convinced that it is through dialogue and cooperation that discrepancies can be resolved and a civilized relationship established between those who think differently....

 

I remember his bond of affection with Fidel Castro, a symbol of the fraternal relations between Africans and Cubans. Fidel has said: “Nelson Mandela will not go down in history for the 27 consecutive years he spent incarcerated without ever renouncing his ideas. He will go down in history because he was capable of cleaning-up his soul from the poison that such an unfair punishment could have planted there; and for his generosity and wisdom, which at the moment of victory allowed him to lead with great talent his selfless and heroic people, knowing that the new South Africa could not be built on hatred and vengeance.”

 

   -- President Raul Castro's speech in Johannesburg

 

 

The struggles that follow the victory of formal equality or universal franchise may not be as filled with drama and moral clarity as those that came before, but they are no less important.  For around the world today, we still see children suffering from hunger and disease.  We still see run-down schools. We still see young people without prospects for the future.  Around the world today, men and women are still imprisoned for their political beliefs, and are still persecuted for what they look like, and how they worship, and who they love.  That is happening today.  

 

And so we, too, must act on behalf of justice.  We, too, must act on behalf of peace.  There are too many people who happily embrace Madiba’s legacy of racial reconciliation, but passionately resist even modest reforms that would challenge chronic poverty and growing inequality.  There are too many leaders who claim solidarity with Madiba’s struggle for freedom, but do not tolerate dissent from their own people.    And there are too many of us on the sidelines, comfortable in complacency or cynicism when our voices must be heard.

 

The questions we face today -- how to promote equality and justice; how to uphold freedom and human rights; how to end conflict and sectarian war -- these things do not have easy answers.  But there were no easy answers in front of that child born in World War I.  Nelson Mandela reminds us that it always seems impossible until it is done.  South Africa shows that is true.  South Africa shows we can change, that we can choose a world defined not by our differences, but by our common hopes.  We can choose a world defined not by conflict, but by peace and justice and opportunity.

 

    -- President Barack Obama's speech in Johannesburg

 

After so many stops and starts in the ruptured, tortuous U.S.-Cuban relationship, it can be difficult at times to muster any hope for change. And so, even after watching the historic handshake between President Barack Obama and President Raul Castro at the memorial for former President Nelson Mandela today, it would be easy enough to conclude that the handshake was just a handshake.

Maybe it was a momentary stunt by a beleaguered White House eager to shake the media – even for a moment - off of our national conversation about the botched Obamacare rollout. Given this administration’s halting, almost fearful approach to Cuba policy for most of the last five years, it’s hard to imagine that this is the beginning of a real and intentional rapprochement.

But it’s also been a long time coming. President Obama has long believed our policy to be a failure – he said as much during his 2004 run for the Senate.  During his first campaign for president he famously expressed (and walked back, somewhat) a willingness to meet with President Raul Castro, and just months into office, Obama called for a "new beginning" with Cuba. Though Obama left most of the policies in place that he inherited, he has notably presided over an historic rebuilding of the Cuban and Cuban American communities' ties - and in the process, winning nearly 50% of Cuban Americans' votes in the 2012 presidential election.

President Castro has similarly expressed a willingness to engage Obama, and specifically, he has suggested he would put "everything" on the table. And in the meantime, Castro has slowly but continuously presided over historic structural changes to the Cuban economy and society - changes he knows are necessary for Cuba, but which also happen to align with any honest assessment of U.S. interests.

Throughout the Obama and Raul Castro administrations, U.S. and Cuban negotiators have made several attempts to return to the table on what appeared to be piecemeal, smaller issues that might have served to build confidence. But each attempt has so far faltered.

Even if this handshake heard round the world was just a stunt, it could give a shot in the arm to the players at the table now. Their presidents took a risk today, and so can they. The media, here at home and abroad, is now primed for a breakout moment. Can they deliver one?

The pieces are in place.

Will the US and Cuba play them?

The fourth anniversary of the imprisonment of Alan Gross marked a fundamental shift in discourse which provides President Obama with the moral and political space to negotiate with Cuba for his release.

Stephen B. Kaplitt, a special assistant to the general counsel of USAID from 2004-2007, and a senior adviser in the State Department from 2007-2009 has written in Politico. 

Alan Gross is an untrained civilian who was put in harm’s way by his own government. His case presents a simple question that has nothing to do with the wisdom of U.S. policy toward Cuba: Will the U.S. government shoulder its responsibility for sending Gross to Cuba and do whatever is necessary to bring him home?

For the first time, Judy Gross directed a demonstration at the  place  a decision must be made that will free her husband, the White House.

The day before she wrote in USA Today:

As we approach the four-year anniversary of Alan's arrest, imprisonment, and nightmare, I hope that the United States and Cuban governments will hear my plea. I ask my country – Alan's country – the country he was serving – and my president: please do what it takes to bring my husband home.

Alan went to Cuba on behalf of our government, and it is up to our government to secure his safe return to his family.

With the utmost respect, Mr. President, I fear that my government – the very government I was serving when I began this nightmare – has abandoned me. Officials in your administration have expressed sympathy and called for my unconditional release, and I very much appreciate that. But it has not brought me home.

 

It is clear to me, Mr. President, that only with your personal involvement can my release be secured. I know that your administration and prior administrations have taken extraordinary steps to obtain the release of other U.S. citizens imprisoned abroad – even citizens who were not arrested for their work on behalf of their country. I ask that you also take action to secure my release, 

We are united in our belief that Mr. Gross' freedom is a humanitarian priority. We urge you to act expeditiously to take whatever steps are in the national interest to obtain his release, and we stand ready to support your Administration in pursuit of this worthy goal.

Just as the travel season ramps up for the holidays, Cuba has announced that it must cease issuing passports and visas because it can't find a new bank to handle financial transactions (Reuters story here and AP here.)  

The State Department is trying to solve the immediate problem by helping the Cuban Interests Section find a new bank.   However, the crisis may demand more.  It offers a logical opportunity for the Obama administration to sustain its committment to purposeful travel. The White House should roll back OFAC's domestic and international assault  on dollar transactions with and by Cuba that began in the Bush era but escalated under Obama..  

That would not only solve the immediate problem of how to continue family, academic, religious and people to people travel, but also end widely despised extraterritorial economic warfare--and encourage the Cubans to end the 10 % surcharge on dollar exchanges, benefiting both remittances and licensed travelers.    

Progresso Weekly on the left reported

José Pertierra, a Washington-based attorney of Cuban origin, said that “due to the blockade and the fact that Cuba is incredibly on the list of countries that support terrorism, the banking rules facing any bank that dares to accept the Interests Section as a client are so, so cumbersome that it becomes more expensive for the bank to have Cuba as a client than to refuse to provide banking services to it.”

“The problem is not the banks, it’s the government. In this country, banks are a business. The fines imposed on banks that allegedly break the blockade are astronomical and the laws are extraterritorial.”