• Submitted by: manso
• Politics and Government
• 11 / 08 / 2010

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Albor Ruiz - Ny Local. Sunday, November 7th 2010, 4:00 AM. It is a never-ending story: Americans won't be traveling to Cuba anytime soon,at least not legally.

Whatever modest hopes about relaxing travel restrictions to Cuba President Obama may have raised earlier in his administration became nothing more than wishful thinking after last week's midterm elections.

For a moment last August it seemed the President was ready to use his executive powers to take another step - however timid - to ease those restrictions. A reputed "leak" from the White House created a persistent buzz that an announcement about a very limited opening in visits to Cuba was imminent.

That "opening" would permit, it was said, cultural, sporting, academic and religious trips to the island, but would keep in place restrictions for tourist travel and the notorious trade embargo, which cannot be repealed without congressional authorization. Not a big deal.

But it never happened. "Political considerations" supposedly pushed the announcement back until after the midterm elections. Then, came the November "shellacking," and with it another missed opportunity for Obama to pursue his stated goal of "recasting" relations with Cuba after 50 years of absurdity and failure.

Late last month - just days before the elections - the United Nations General Assembly voted for the 19th consecutive year to urge the U.S. to end its embargo of Cuba. The vote was 187-2, with only the United States and Israel voting in favor of maintaining the policy and Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands abstaining.

In other words, except for Israel, all European Union nations and U.S. allies either voted against the embargo or abstained from voting at all. Cuba had the support of every single Latin American country.

"It is truly bewildering that the U.S. continues to pursue this policy and that President Obama enforces it with such vigor," said Sarah Stephens of the Center for Democracy in the Americas. "This lopsided vote in the UN ought to be a lesson for U.S. policy makers that the sell-by date on this flawed policy is long in the past and it should be replaced with engagement without further delay."

Yet, worldwide condemnation of the embargo notwithstanding, Republicans are ready to install Florida's Ileana Ros-Lehtinen - an ultra-conservative Cuban-American and shrill supporter of even stronger sanctions to Cuba - as head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the authorizing committee with jurisdiction over most of Cuba-related legislation. This would, of course, effectively kill whatever steps Congress could have taken toward a more rational Cuba policy.

Ros-Lehtinen, who routinely refers to Cubans on the island as "brothers" and "sisters," doesn't have any qualms in doing her best to make their life as difficult as possible.

She won't be alone in her relentless attempts to punish the country in which she was born. Two other Cuban-Americans, Florida Republican Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart and Democratic New Jersey Rep. Albio Sires, are certain to support her. In the Senate the newly elected Tea Party poster boy Marco Rubio, a Miami-born son of Cuban immigrants who supports the embargo and opposes easing travel restrictions, will join his staunchly pro-embargo Cuban American Democratic colleague from New Jersey, Bob Menéndez.

Clearly, another opportunity has been missed. In the wake of the November pounding, U.S.-Cuba relations - not surprisingly - appear to be headed back to the future. aruiz@...

NY DAILY NEWS

Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/queens/2010/11/07/2010-11-07