Keep Cuba out of OAS

The following editorial appeared recently in the Miami Herald:

Bringing Cuba into the Organization of American States is the diplomatic version of trying to square the circle. How can you reconcile "the dismal state of human rights in Cuba" (Human Rights Watch) with the OAS mandate to "promote and defend" democracy in the Western Hemisphere?

Answer: You can't.

That's unlikely to stop the Cuban dictatorship's apologists, however. Cuba has said it doesn't want to belong to the OAS, but that apparently matters little because the point of this absurd exercise is to pull Uncle Sam's whiskers.

To no one's surprise, the move is being led by Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, who want to see how much trouble they can make for an organization for which they have little use or respect.

Both have an agenda that has more to do with extending their own power than anything else. Chavez and Ortega are busy tearing down democracy in their own countries.

In Venezuela, this includes government intimidation of the few outlets of independent media left in that country. For Ortega it means making shady political deals with a convicted former president in order to tighten his grip on Nicaragua.

As long as they keep the OAS focused on distractions like Cuba, diplomats will be too busy to look into their domestic political mischief.

For the Obama administration, this effort poses a twofold challenge: If it adopts an intransigent stance, it becomes vulnerable to the charge that U.S. policy is stuck in the past. If it meekly goes along, however, it will be giving up on the fundamental principles that led to the creation of the OAS as a bulwark against dictatorship.

Instead, the State Department has wisely zeroed in on the fundamental inconsistency of allowing a country run by the same tyrant for 50 years into an organization whose charter promotes political liberty.

U.S. diplomats put forward a proposal last month calling for the OAS to start talks about the eventual reintegration of that country into the hemispheric body "consistent with principles and values of the OAS charter, the InterAmerican Democratic charter and other instruments."

This is the bottom line for the OAS and its member countries. It can admit Cuba as a member or it can uphold its basic principles, but it cannot do both, not as long as the Castro brothers are in charge.

If the OAS decides to unilaterally readmit Cuba, it would be sacrificing its principles to appease a dictatorship. At that point, it would be fair to ask whether the continued existence of the OAS — and U.S. membership and financial support for it — would serve any useful purpose.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.