Castro Celebrates Obama Policy Changes

MIENTRAS EN CUBA TODO SIGUE IGUAL



January 16, 2011
According to Reuters:

Steps by U.S. President Barack Obama to relax restrictions on Cuba are not a major change in policy, but do mark a defeat for those who want a hard line on the island's leadership, a Cuban government website said.

Obama issued an executive order on Friday loosening limits on U.S. travel and money remittances to the communist-led Caribbean nation, extending his efforts to reach out to its people.

In the first reaction from Cuba's government, the website www.cubadebate.cu said the move showed many people in the United States favor a softening of Washington's decades-old trade embargo and policy of isolation toward the island.

It called the easing of restrictions a blow for the new chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Cuban-born Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

"The decision is the first defeat for Ros-Lehtinen, who assumed her post in Congress promising to harden policies against the island," the website said in an article posted late on Friday.

Cubadebate is often used by Cuba's former president Fidel Castro to publish editorial columns.