ReutersBy Pascal Fletcher | Reuters – 12 hrs ago
MIAMI (Reuters) - The international development community, especially
financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank, and the United
States should reach out to communist Cuba as it pursues economic reforms
and bring it "in from the cold," a new think tank report says.
The report published by the Brookings Institution in Washington says
incipient economic reforms set in motion by Cuban President Raul Castro
should be encouraged by the world's economic policy makers because
history suggests that such reforms can foster political pluralism.
"In approaching Cuban economic reform, the United States should join
with the international development community in nudging forward that
irresistible flow of history," said the report, which will be released
Friday.
The report's author, Richard Feinberg, is a non-resident senior fellow
with the Latin America Initiative at the Brookings Institution. He
served as special assistant to President Bill Clinton for National
Security Affairs and senior director of the National Security Council's
(NSC) Office of Inter-American Affairs.
The Brookings publication is one of several reports by U.S. think tanks
and institutions that have appeared in recent weeks urging President
Barack Obama's administration to pay close attention to the reforms
currently under way in Cuba, which remains the target of a long-running
U.S. economic embargo.
LIBERALIZATION
President Castro's reforms, endorsed by Cuba's ruling Communist Party in
an April Congress, include ground-breaking measures such as allowing
Cubans to buy and sells cars and homes. They also widen self-employment
and private business opportunities for tens of thousands of Cubans in a
bid to soak up worker layoffs in the stagnant centralized state economy.
Feinberg said Cuba's moves to promote more market-oriented systems and
its increasing openness to the international economy provided a "golden
opportunity" for engagement, despite the persistence of conservative
elements in the leadership resistant to significant political and
economic change.
"My argument precisely is not to deny that there are forces of inertia
there; clearly there are and they remain strong. But it is the role of
the international community in circumstances such as this to lend their
weight to the positive forces of change," Feinberg told Reuters.
He cited the examples of Nicaragua and Vietnam, which despite their
socialist governments still maintained successful relationships with
international financial institutions (IFIs) like the International
Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.
"IFI staff economists and sector specialists are chomping at the bit to
engage in Cuba - they should be allowed and encouraged to do so," the
report said.
Revolutionary Cuba withdrew from the World Bank in 1960 and from the IMF
in 1964, and since then has kept up a thunderous propaganda drumbeat
against financial institutions which its leaders dismissively refer to
as "tools of imperialism."
The report blamed what it called "the unyielding Cuban-American lobby"
in the United States for bullying the U.S. government into blocking any
outreach toward Cuba from the Washington-based IMF and World Bank.
(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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