Bush eager for end to oppression in Cuba

If Iraq is understandably the current focus of the Bush administration's foreign policy, the president is not overlooking an irritant in America's back yard, namely Cuba and its communist leader, Fidel Castro.

President Bush has just taken steps to stiffen his anti-Castro policy. This puts him at odds with some members of Congress as well as business leaders who favor a policy of relaxation, but does him no political harm with many Cuban-Americans in Florida, a state important in his re-election campaign.

After a review of the Cuban situation by a presidential commission, Bush has issued some significant directives.

One is that the United States will work to prevent Raul Castro from succeeding his older brother, which would continue a communist dictatorship. The United States will fund programs to support Cuban dissidents and democracy and human rights in Cuba.

A second is to deploy a specially equipped C-130 aircraft in international airspace around Cuba that would broadcast to Cubans the Spanish-language programs of Radio Marti and TV Marti, thus eluding the Castro regime's attempts at jamming them. Radio Marti and TV Marti are U.S. government stations that broadcast uncensored news to Cuba. Cuba's own media are censored.

A third initiative is a restriction of dollar remittances from the United States to Cuba, which the Castro regime uses to obtain hard currency and to bolster its ailing economy.

Such money has been used by Cubans to shop in special dollar-only stores carrying items not available elsewhere. The communist government last week abruptly "closed for inventory" the dollar-only stores amid furious denunciations of the Bush decrees.

It has not been a good month for Castro. He also suffered a falling out with Mexico, which has generally been cordial to the Cuban leader. But with the accession to power of President Vicente Fox, Mexico has attached greater significance to human rights and last month cast a critical vote against Cuba at the annual meeting of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. Despite his well-documented abuse of human rights in Cuba, Castro has long been sensitive to international criticism in this regard and has gone to great diplomatic lengths to fend off negative U.N. resolutions. This time around, a resolution deploring Castro's jailing of 75 dissidents earlier this year, and asking him to admit a U.N. human rights inspector to Cuba, passed 22 votes to 21.