Congressional Group Wants Cuba Dialogue

HAVANA, Dec. 18, 2006 — -- Ten members of Congress huddled for a strategy meeting at the National Hotel on Saturday evening and were not happy, according to some of those present.

Most of the six Democrats and four Republicans had visited Cuba many times over the last decade, opposed the U.S embargo and had repeatedly dined and chatted with President Fidel Castro.

Now that Castro was out of the picture, they had expected his younger brother and acting president, Raúl Castro, to do the same with them.

Raúl Castro, in a major speech earlier this month, said Cuba is willing "to settle the long U.S.-Cuba disagreement at the negotiating table," provided Washington accepted Cuba's sovereignty and such principles as nonintervention.

But the meeting they had hoped for with Raúl Castro had not happened, and it was now clear it would not before the lawmakers headed back to Washington Sunday.

The delegation had dined Friday evening with National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon, the point man for U.S. relations, and met with Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque and other officials Saturday.

They had heard it all before. Cuba was ready to talk but not to change. The United States was engaged in an all-out assault on the island nation, not the other way around, and should give ground first.

"I've traveled all over the world, and this is the first time I've been lectured to," one lawmaker quipped.

But most important, the members of Congress had been told that their belief that Fidel Castro was dying of cancer was as false as Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. Fidel Castro did not have a terminal illness and would take on some role in the future, said each and every one of the Cuban officials they met.

"The party line is that Fidel is coming back," Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., said at a Havana press conference on Sunday.

Meeting Would Send Wrong Message

So why no chat with Raúl Castro, the U.S. lawmakers asked one another in the sixth-floor meeting room at the hotel, and what did that mean for their mission?

Then it dawned on them.

The meeting with Raúl Castro, who was not known to have ever met with American politicians before, would certainly have been spectacular news, but it would have also sent a message that Fidel Castro was for all intents and purposes done for. It was a message Havana was not ready to send.

Whatever the 80-year-old famous rebel is suffering from is serious, the lawmakers agreed, but some thought it probably was not cancer, as U.S. intelligence czar, John Negroponte, claimed.

It was clear that the day-to-day operations of the Cuban government were in Raúl's hands, but there was also the hope that the elder Castro would return in some fashion, and denial he was through still reigned.

Since Castro took sick almost five months ago, where the iconic figure is and what ails him have been carefully kept from the public, though officials have repeatedly insisted that Castro's illness is not terminal and that he will be around for some time, a position most diplomats and experts doubt.

"The Cubans appear far from ready to let Fidel go," Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., told ABC News.

"But that's not the point. The embargo is a failed, dumb policy," he said.

The lawmakers had also met Saturday with Cardinal Jaime Ortega and with ambassadors from other Western countries, all of who opposed the embargo as counterproductive.

"They said to each other that nothing has changed and everything has changed, and that it is still the right time to begin a dialogue," one delegation staffer, who asked not to be identified, said.

Talking With Cuba No Easy Task

The meeting broke up and the Congress members went out for dinner with a group of Cuban artists and intellectuals, and some later crashed a party with their new Cuban friends.

"We unanimously believe that the United States should respond positively to the proposal made by Raúl Castro in his speech of Dec.2," said a joint statement read by Arizona Republican Jeff Flake at the Havana press conference Sunday, reflecting the consensus reached the night before.

The statement said no result could be achieved without a diplomatic effort, but a dialogue between the two countries would not be easy.

"No one should be under the illusion that a negotiation with Cuba would be easy, or that [there would be] results at all," the statement said.

Indeed, when the issue of political prisoners was brought up with Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, he said it shouldn't stop a dialogue any more than Cuba demanding the United States close the Guantanamo prison on occupied Cuban territory.

"Look at the bright side," the staffer quipped. "Usually they rant and rave about there being no political prisoners, just U.S. mercenaries, behind bars here. This time they implied the issue could be on the table, and in Havana that's progress."

The largest U.S. congressional delegation to visit Cuba since the now ailing president came to power in a 1959 revolution was led by Reps. Flake and William Delahunt, D-Mass., leaders of the Congressional Cuba Working Group that opposes the embargo.

"They didn't meet Raúl but left convinced more than ever the time has come to change U.S. policy," the staffer said.

"Look for legislation next year to loosen restrictions on Cuban Americans going home to visit and help their families, and maybe lifting travel restrictions altogether," he added.