Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in San Salvador (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

In 1962, President Kennedy’s ambassador to the OAS, DeLesseps Morrison, a rabid anti-communist, pushed a resolution through the organization suspending Cuba’s membership in the Western Hemisphere’s most important regional institution. Given the lack of overwhelming regional backing for such a move against Cuba at the time, this was no easy task. In fact, in order to convince Haitian President Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier to support the U.S. initiative to bar Cuba from the OAS, Ambassador Morrison had to bribe the reprehensible Haitian dictator by promising to fund the construction of a new airport in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince.

Haiti was thus won over to provide the last of the necessary fourteen votes to suspend Cuba from the organization. (In enlisting the assistance of one dictatorship to expel another, Washington demonstrated its selective indignation at authoritarianism.)

From “Ostracism or Reconciliation? Cuba, the U.S. and the Organization of American States” prepared by Council on Hemispheric Affairs Research Associates Arienna Grody and Lily Fesler (full text here)

Much reporting on the coming OAS meeting has incorporated the spin emerging from official US sources. Some correctives:

1) Cuba is still a member of the OAS. It was suspended, not expelled, in 1962 as the result of an intense and still-resented campaign by a US government more dominant than today. Justifications for suspension did not include internal democracy or human rights and are now moot.

2) Virtually all OAS members support ending Cuba’s suspension without conditions, not only more left-leaning governments.

3) Nothing in the OAS Charter, or subsequent documents, including the Inter-American Democratic Charter (IADC) precludes Cuba taking up full and active membership. The IADC is quite explicit about measures to be taken in the face of ‘unconstitutional interruption of the democratic order of a member state’, i.e. a military coup. It incorporates aspirations that all members be representative democracies with respect for human rights but does not address restoring the status of an existing member with a different political orientation.

4) The US embargo and forced transition agenda with Cuba seriously violate the OAS Charter, which is quite explicit that ‘No State...has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State. The foregoing principle prohibits not only armed force but also any other form of interference...against its political, economic, and cultural elements.’" (Article 19, see also Articles 3e and 20)

Diplomats tell TIME that major Latin broker countries like Brazil are stepping in now to help hammer out a deal palatable to both Washington and Havana — one that would probably demand a lesser gesture of democratic commitment on Cuba's part, like the release of political prisoners. But they also suggest that the General Assembly may end up deciding to simply hold a yearlong "dialogue" on the matter, to allow the U.S. and Cuba to ease into a compromise that would be unveiled in 2010. –Tim Padgett, Time Magazine

Not good enough. Placing special conditions on Cuba’s membership or ducking the issue brands the organization as still too compliant with US domestic political agendas and sustains Fidel Castro’s anti-OAS argument. An extended dialogue about reentry is likely given Cuba’s oft repeated denunciation of the OAS, but such a very useful process can only begin if the 1962 suspension is repealed and it is only up to Cuba to decide if and when it retakes its seat.

As with the rest of Administration Cuba policy to date, trying to maintain leverage by incremental change is living in denial and counterproductive. Secretary Clinton should simply abstain if the OAS votes on ending Cuba's suspension without conditions. In that way she demonstrates we are listening and serious about a new collaborative role, even if the Administration is not able politically to join the affirmative vote.

Most of all, the Administration cannot let it seem as though Sen. Menendez (D, NJ) controls US foreign policy with bluster and threats to cut off OAS funding.

--John McAuliff