WASHINGTON - Those hoping for a new US policy toward Cuba have waited nearly 50 years for Fidel Castro to voluntarily step down. But they will have to wait at least one more year, after President Bush leaves office, to see any possibility of change in the hard-line US position that has transcended nine administrations.
Bush and his advisers made clear yesterday that they do not intend to relax the trade sanctions and other policies aimed at isolating the Cuban government. The president called on Cuba to transition to democracy and seemed to belittle those advocating a new stability that would leave political prisoners behind bars.
"This transition ought to lead to free and fair elections - and I mean free and I mean fair, not these kind of staged elections that the Castro brothers try to foist off as being true democracy," Bush said at a news conference in Kigali, Rwanda, where he was traveling yesterday.
Perhaps a bigger question, in the wake of Castro's announcement that he is retiring, is whether Bush's confrontational approach will outlast his presidency, which will end next January. Substantial doubts in Congress about the efficacy of the US approach continue to collide with domestic politics that give a heavy influence to anti-Castro émigrés in South Florida, New Jersey and elsewhere.
In their comments yesterday, each of the top three remaining presidential contenders offered little sign that they will break with the pillars of existing policy.
Speaking during a campaign stop in Columbus, Ohio, Senator John McCain of Arizona said there is no need to change US policy unless Cuba takes dramatic steps toward establishing greater freedoms. Otherwise, he said, a shift in policy toward Cuba could merely keep the old guard in power. "I worry that we would extend aid assistance that would prop up Raúl [Castro] or any of his friends and comrades who repressed the people of Cuba for too long," McCain said.
Senators Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois both held out the possibility of the United States offering incentives, but only if Cuba adopts democratic changes, something most independent analysts deem unlikely in the short term.
"I would say to the new leadership: The people of the United States are ready to meet you, if you move forward towards the path of democracy, with real, substantial reforms," Clinton said in a statement.
Obama offered the biggest potential break with the status quo on Cuba. The candidate had already endorsed lifting restrictions on Cuban Americans traveling to the island or sending money to relatives, while also indicating that he would be willing to meet with the leaders of the country without preconditions.
Yet even if change is not emerging from Washington, it might come from Cuba.
Brian Latell, who wrote "After Fidel," a recent biography of the Castro brothers, said Raúl Castro has indicated on at least three occasions since temporarily assuming power more than a year and half ago - because of Fidel's illness - that he would be open to engaging the United States. "There is a greater likelihood that a new Cuban leadership that is emerging may provide more inducements to officials in Washington," he said.
Lawmakers who consider the longstanding US trade restrictions as counterproductive seized on yesterday's news to press their case. "The US embargo gave Fidel a tremendous advantage in terms of lengthening his tenure," said Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, a leader in the drive to ease sanctions. "Let's not give his successor the same advantage."
But powerful voices continue to press for no change. "The question is not so much 'When is the US going to change its policy?' The question is when Cuba will change its policy," said Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez, a co-chairman of a government commission on Cuba. "Fidel Castro is still running the show as long as he is alive."
