The Obama administration will lay more groundwork for normalizing diplomatic relations with Cuba next week when a high-level U.S. delegation visits Havana for talks, but it is not commenting on whether President Obama intends to meet with Cuban leader Raul Castro in April.
Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson, the top U.S. diplomat for Latin America, will lead a U.S. delegation to the island nation Jan. 21.
The visit comes just days after the U.S. Treasury and Commerce Departments took steps to ease a series of sanctions and restrictions on travel to Cuba and commerce between the two countries.
Jacobson’s talks with her Cuban counterparts will focus on migration between the United States and Cuba just weeks after Obama announced his executive action to try to normalize relations. The president’s move has so far failed to stem the flood of Cuban refugees arriving in the United States.
Opponents of the move reversing 50 years of U.S. policy toward the communist island nation also expect Secretary of State John Kerry to visit Havana in early February.
Fearing that Obama is rushing the new policies, advocates for greater reforms in Cuba are already vigorously lobbying against any type of meeting or formal handshake between President Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro when the two leaders attend the Summit of the Americas in Panama in mid-April.
Asked by the Examiner, officials at the State Department and the Oval Office declined to comment on reports that Obama is planning to meet Castro, the brother of revolutionary leader and long-ruling communist dictator Fidel Castro.
“I would not be surprised if a meeting occurs in Panama and I would say that and sending Kerry to Cuba would be premature,” Sebastian Arcos, assistant director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International Institute, told the Washington Examiner. “I believe the president rushed into these negotiations on Dec. 17 and has been rushing forward the changes in policy — against all caution.”
The Cuban-born Arcos, who joined the first independent Cuban human rights organization in the late 1980s and came to the United States in 1992, cautioned against rushing into diplomatic relations with the communist country. “Even if you agree that the policy needs to be revamped, no longstanding U.S. policy should be changed in a matter of weeks,” he added. “Prudence calls for that.”
Arcos, a former State Department adviser on Cuban human rights issues, pointed to President Obama’s visit to Burma as an example of the dangers of breaking down former barriers and meeting with leaders of oppressive governments too soon after a perceived thaw in relations.
Obama first visited Burma in 2012, sitting down with Burma’s President Thein Sein, a former leader in the country’s oppressive military junta.
During the visit, Obama conveyed optimism for democratic reform and touted the benefits of deepening engagement. By his second visit last fall, Burma’s government had slid backwards, with political reforms stalled and ethnic reconciliation, political prisoner releases and constitutional reform still on hold.
“The Burmese people have been living under a terrible military dictatorship for decades and the international community was essentially in agreement to isolate it very much in the same way they treated the Cuban regime,” Arcos said.
After the Obama administration agreed it was time for a thaw, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was first sent to Burma. The president himself visited later.
“The result was that reform stalled because the military dictatorship got everything it wanted ahead of the reforms — this is exactly what has happened with Cuba,” Arcos said. “If we give everything up front, we stop providing any incentive for movement.”
A new Pew Research Center poll shows that 63 percent of Americans approve of Obama’s decision to re-establish diplomatic ties with Cuba after more than 50 years but just 32 percent expect Cuba to become more Democratic.
