Eduardo Verdugo, AP
"SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras, Jun 3 (IPS) - After heated debate, the 39th General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) decided Wednesday to lift its 47-year suspension of Cuba, without conditions...Honduran Foreign Minister Patricia Rodas, one of the main architects of Wednesday´s resolution, said that "as of now, Cuba´s participation in the OAS will be reinstated by means of dialogue on Cuba´s request and in the framework of the democratic practices that govern the OAS."
"(A)s the host country for this assembly, we are pleased with the amends made to the island nation. We have begun to build a new history in our relations, of tolerance, respect, solidarity, the self-determination of nations and the right to organize ourselves," said Rodas. "
When Assistant Secretary of State Tom Shannon addressed the OAS Assembly on Wednesday afternoon after it had adopted by acclamation its historic resolution to end Cuba's suspension (text here), he received the longest and warmest applause for a government representative's comment, 30 seconds. That happened because his words were those of a statesman and a partner.
However, subsequent expressions by US officials threaten to undo his breakthrough in US-Latin American relations.
The OAS was faced with very different approaches going into the Assembly. The US was willing to see Cuba's 1962 suspension annulled but only on the condition that to resume participation Cuba be obligated to meet US goals for democracy and political prisoners. Virtually all other member countries simply wanted to let Cuba resume its active membership without creating new and unprecedented conditions.
The diplomatic compromise was to end completely the 1962 suspension and leave ambiguous what would happen if Cuba decided it wanted to come back.
Having watched on streaming video the extraordinary excitement and satisfaction of the Assembly delegations, I was startled by the official statement from the Secretary of State:
"I am pleased that everyone came to agree that Cuba cannot simply take its seat and that we must put Cuba’s participation to a determination down the road – if it ever chooses to seek reentry."
US media coverage also seemed to have missed the substance and spirit of what took place. The likely source was a telephone press briefing held on short notice by Shannon and National Security Council official Dan Restrepo.
Washington's new position seemed to be not only trying to put the best face on a compromise upsetting to Cuban American hardliners, but also to frame the decision in such a way as to make it less likely that Cuba would respond favorably. While that may make sense in the hermetic kingdom of the Beltway, it gave Havana an opportunity to celebrate the undoing of an historic wrong and take a pass at least initially on re-engagement, as Ricardo Alarcon quickly did.
In the briefing Restrepo goaded Cuba that the Assembly had made it a supplicant and spun a bizarre rewrite of history:
"The process begins with what is a difficult decision for a Cuban Government that has spent 40 years railing against an institution because of its defense of democracy and individual human rights. They would have to swallow that to ask to get into the organization."
Shannon took the same position in more diplomatic terms:
"the resolution makes very clear that the process by which Cuba must follow in order to reenter the OAS, requires first that Cuba request permission. Secondly, that it enter into a dialogue with the relevant organs of the OAS, and that that dialogue and the decision rendered by the OAS must be in accord with the practices, purposes, and principles of the OAS. And the resolution makes very clear that the fundamental instruments and documents in the OAS, like the Inter-American Democratic Charter, will be the guiding documents as the OAS engages with Cuba."
However their words are alien to the spirit of the Assembly as expressed in speeches after the vote of acclamation. Nor are their interpretations justified by the actual text as read by the chair of the Assembly, Foreign Minister of Honduras Patricia Rodas:
"the General Assembly... resolves
1) that resolution 6 adopted on January 31st 1962, at the 8th meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs which excluded the government of Cuba from its participation in the Inter-American system hereby ceases to have effect in the Organization of American States. (55 seconds of standing ovation)
2) that the participation of the Republic of Cuba in the OAS will be the result of a process of dialogue initiated at the request of the government of Cuba and in accordance with the practices and purposes and principles of the OAS" (15 seconds of applause)
The content of clause 1 clearly means that Cuba is no longer suspended. Logically, since it never lost its membership, it is now legally entitled to resume it. The content of clause 2 simply describes the mechanics of how that will happen. Cuba first has to decide it wants to resume its seat and say so, i.e. no one is forcing it to reenter the organization. The process of actually retaking its seat will then be discussed. A dialogue is not an application. No further decision or vote is mentioned. Being in accord with "practices and purposes and principles" is not a list of preconditions.
The US seems to be relying on this paragraph in the preamble,
"The General Assembly, recognizing the shared interest in the full participation of all the member states, guided by the purposes and principles of the OAS, embodied in the Charter of the organization and its other fundamental instruments related to security, democracy, self-determination, non-intervention, human rights and development"
Note that language does not set conditions. It makes "full participation" the primary goal. The list of "purposes and principles" are characterized as "guides", i.e. values. Similarly, security, self-determination and non-intervention could be guides advanced by Cuba and the rest of the membership of the OAS against the US embargo and prolonged strategy of regime change. Cuba's less than ideal approach to democracy and human rights would not be inherently disqualifying unless the US was similarly judged in reference to the other guides.
Restrepo waxed self-righteous
"for Cuba to return to the organization, the organization has to agree that Cuba is abiding by the same rules that everybody else is abiding by".
Cuba's practice of harsh imprisonment without sufficient objective legal due process is hardly unique on an island that includes the Guantanamo prison camp. And if the US can choose which parts to abide by of even the primary constitutional Charter, Cuba certainly has the right to do the same with the content of a secondary instrument, the Inter-American Democratic Charter.
The point is not to make a lawyer's argument for Cuba's eligibility. This is a political decision. Every other member of the OAS wants to return to the status quo before the despised 1962 suspension, to bring Cuba back in as a full functioning member without posing political obstacles which they know it will refuse. The US tried to use OAS participation as one more vehicle for pressuring Cuba to make changes. Many other countries favor those same changes and have no problem with their inclusion as goals in principle, but no one else agrees to imposing them, knowing that is a tired and ineffective strategy.
Washington ducked the bullet of either facing a vote, where it would have been completely isolated, or of alienating the Hemisphere by blocking a consensus. However, underlying sentiments remain the same. If and when Cuba decides it wants to take its legitimate seat at the OAS, there is no reason to believe Washington will be able to force or win a vote to stop it. Note that Minister Rodas spoke of, "the framework of the democratic practices that govern the OAS" not the domestic political systems of its members.
Bloomberg.com offered an unusual regional insight that may be predictive:
Cuba will rejoin the Organization of American States after “a lot of emotion” passes, said Ruben Blades, tourism minister in Panama, a member of the Washington- based group.“There is a lot of emotion right now in the world,” Blades, also a six-time Grammy Award winning singer, said in an interview in New York. “So it’s a matter of processing. Eventually we will see a different scenario in Cuba as we have seen everywhere else.”
CNN reported that Miami's extremist wing was not appeased by the US spin of the OAS compromise:
"Today we witnessed an example of the Obama administration's absolute diplomatic incompetence and its unrestricted appeasement of the enemies of the United States," Cuban-American U.S. Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Florida, and Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Florida, said in a joint statement. "The OAS is a putrid embarrassment."
Dan Erickson of the Inter-American Dialogue summed up the situation well for the Guardian,
"The vote sends a powerful signal to the Obama administration that the path of moderate, incremental change in US policy towards Cuba is depleting America's political capital in the region at an alarming rate."
--John McAuliff
**************
Articles giving a non-US spin to the OAS, the text of the OAS resolution and the US draft, the text of Clinton, Shannon and Restrepo statements are posted here
To see streaming videos of the plenary session that dealt with the Cuba resolution, go here or here (This is the original feed, so most of the speeches are in Spanish. On request to director@ffrd.org, I can send a download of part of the English feed which included translations.}
The lobbyist in Washington for Cuban American hard liners, Mauricio Claver-Carone, comes to a similar conclusion that the OAS resolution effectively allows Cuba to resume membership whenever it wishes.