US phone move rings in changes for exiled Cubans

Published on Saturday 24 May 2008 20:17

SINCE succeeding his ailing 81-year-old brother, Fidel, in February, Cuba's Raúl Castro, 76, has made a series of changes, opening access to mobile phones, computers and DVD players.

But the price of such luxuries is prohibitive for most Cubans. As US president George Bush noted, the changes are "nothing more than a cruel joke perpetuated on a long-suffering people".

Which is perhaps why the Bush government last week announced that American citizens would soon be allowed to send mobile phones to relatives in Cuba, a policy shift he said was intended to force Castro to make good on promised reforms by giving his people the freedom to communicate. It is also a direct challenge to Castro's authority.

"If the Cuban regime is serious about improving life for the Cuban people, it will take steps necessary to make these changes meaningful," Bush said during a White House ceremony attended by Cuban-Americans, including the families of imprisoned dissidents.

"If the Cuban people can be trusted with mobile phones they should be trusted to speak freely in public."

The White House stressed that the announcement did not represent a softening of the US embargo on trade with Cuba, enacted in the 1960s in an attempt to force a change of government by choking the Cuban economy.

Whether Cuba will allow phones sent from the US to be distributed and used is unclear. At least one Cuban-American, Mel Martinez, Republican Senator for Florida, had doubts. "I don't think they're sincere," he said. "I hope they prove me wrong."

Martinez described Bush's initiative as "incremental", though he added that if it worked, it could signal a tipping point towards greater freedom. "This is what Cuba is waiting for," the senator said. "That moment, that spark, that one thing that creates a moment of change."

Under Bush's initiative, Americans will be allowed to buy mobile phones in the US, activate them there and pay bills for their relatives.

&#149 Democratic presidential front-runner Barack Obama has sought to toughen his position on meeting US enemies such as Castro after a week in which Republican nominee John McCain ridiculed him for saying he would meet the Cuban leader. In a speech to

the Cuban American National Foundation Obama said he would maintain the existing trade embargo to use as leverage for winning democratic change in Cuba. But he said he would lift restrictions on family travel and remittances to the island.