Cuba's Raul Castro Open To Meet Obama: Report

Cuba's President Raul Castro reacts to the chilly winds at Havana's Jose Marti airport during the departure of his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao, November 19, 2008. REUTERS/Enrique De La Osa

From Reuters:

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban President Raul Castro is open to meeting U.S. President-elect Barack Obama on neutral ground to try to resolve the island's four-decade-old feud with Washington, according to an interview with a U.S. magazine.

The interview for The Nation was conducted by U.S. actor Sean Penn, who traveled to Havana after meeting Cuban ally Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and before Obama won the U.S. presidential election on November 4.

"You asked if I would accept to meet with (Obama) in Washington. I would have to think about it. I would discuss it with all my comrades in the leadership," Castro tells Penn in the interview for a December 15 issue published on its website.

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Update: Raul Castro to Sean Penn: he'd meet Obama at Gitmo -- Yahoo News/AP

My Comment: Both countries will come to some understanding one day. But the problem in this lousy relationship has never been solely the United States alone .... the big problem has always been the repressive nature of the Cuban Government on its people, and its support for revolutions in the hemisphere. A fact that millions of Cuban exiles know so well.

As a Canadian citizen, I have no restrictions going to Cuba .... an opportunity that I have taken advantage of many times in the past 15 years. Bottom line .... Cuba is a repressive and backward state. While Liberals love to sing the praises of the revolution .... I can guarantee you that none would want to live there for any serious length of time.

I know that I would not.

The food sucks. If you get sick their hospitals are death traps (contrary to what a lot of people on the left would like to believe in). Crummy TV programming. Grinding poverty everywhere. No freedom of speech. No freedom of the press. No political parties allowed. No independent labour unions allowed. Critics of the regime are thrown in prison (which is better than what it was in the first decade of the revolution when critics were just simply shot). Schools are just puppy-mills for indoctrinated students (fortunately 90% of the student population know that this aspect of their education is crap). Libraries and computers .... a luxury for only the politically connected. And my pet peeve ..... lousy or non-existent internet connections.

However .... all is not bleak. The rum and cigars are fantastic .... just make sure that you get the real stuff, not the counterfeit stuff. You have some mobility to travel around the country now .... which is better than what it was 15 years ago. Ansd the people are hungry to know what life in America is like .... which they all know, but love hearing about it anyway.

President Obama should make his trip to Guantanamo. He should meet Castro. Smoke a cigar. Make some small talk. And in private .... tell him that Cuba should grow up and join the rest of the world.

Such a trip and meeting will not change anything in the short term. But in the medium term (5 to 10 years), this simple engagement will encourage many middle age Cubans that they are not forgotten by the U.S., and that the door is open to the U.S. when their government does the changes that it should have done decades ago.