[NYTr] Bush to Tout Cuban Life After Castro

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

AP via Google - Oct 24, 2007
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gfQlDxflKU_fBF9wEgOhzNrxnRDw

Bush to Tout Cuban Life After Castro

By BEN FELLER

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush, seizing on Fidel Castro's fading
health as a chance for rare change, will ask other nations Wednesday to
help Cuba become a free society one day by committing money and
political capital to the cause.

In a speech at the State Department — his first standalone address on
Cuba in four years — Bush will look to the day when Castro is gone.
Bush will describe a nation in which Cuban people choose a
representative government and enjoy basic freedoms, with support from a
broad international coalition.

For now, though, Castro is still the island's unchallenged leader, as
he has been for almost 50 years. And he remains a nemesis to Bush, whom
he accuses of being obsessed with Cuba and of threatening humanity with
nuclear war. At the age of 81, Castro is ailing and rarely seen in
public. But life has changed little on the island under the authority
of his brother, 76-year-old Raul Castro, who has been his elder
brother's hand-chosen successor for decades.

Bush is expected to tout peaceful, pro-democracy movements in Cuba and
call on other countries to get behind them. In a direct appeal to
ordinary citizens in Cuba, he will tell them they have the power to
change their country, but the White House says that is not meant to be
a call for armed rebellion.

Bush will propose at least three initiatives: the creation of an
international "freedom fund" to help Cuba's potential rebuilding of its
country one day; a U.S. licensing of private groups to provide Internet
access to Cuban students; and an invitation to Cuban youth to join a
scholarship program.

The latter two offerings help the Bush administration underscore the
kind of real-life limitations that Cubans now face — from blocked
Internet access to restricted information about their leaders to denial
of legal protections. The creation of the international fund is meant
to speed up societal transformation.

"We all know that Cuba is going to face very significant requirements
to rebuild itself," said a senior administration official, who spoke on
condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting the president. "There's a
whole set of challenges that Cuba is going to face. The United States
will clearly want to help the Cubans as they define what it is they
need, but we think the international community should be thinking that
way as well."

Washington's decades-old embargo prohibits U.S. tourists from visiting
the island and chokes off nearly all trade between both countries. Bush
will ask Congress to maintain the embargo, which has come under
scrutiny and calls for reassessment from some lawmakers.

Cuba staged municipal elections on Sunday, the first step in a process
that will determine if Fidel Castro is re-elected or replaced next
year. The Communist Party is the only one allowed, and while candidates
do not have to be members, critics claim they are the only ones who
ever win.

Bush, increasingly, is speaking of a Castro-free Cuba. As he put it
earlier this month: "In Havana, the long rule of a cruel dictator is
nearing an end." 

Copyright  © 2007 The Associated Press.