LatinNews Daily Briefing - 15 September 2011

Cuba: In a roundtable with Hispanic press on 12 September, President Barack Obama stated that Cuba was yet to adopt sufficiently “aggressive” policies on economic reform, or on its stance towards political prisoners. This week the former governor New Mexico, Bill Richardson (D), failed to obtain permission from Cuban authorities for a prison visit with the jailed US citizen Alan Gross. In March, Gross, a subcontractor for USAid, was sentenced by a Havana court to 15 years in prison for “acts against the Cuban state”. Richardson, who has been to Cuba several times, had intimated that he would stay in Havana until he could visit Gross, whose health has apparently deteriorated. However he returned to the US on 14 September empty handed. President Obama has put his tentative outreach to Havana on ice over the Gross case, prompting efforts by the former US president Jimmy Carter to mediate. There had been an expectation on the US side that Cuba might agree to release Gross on humanitarian grounds. The Cuban government led by President Raúl Castro has sought to use Gross as a bargaining chip to secure the release of the ‘Cuban Five’, Cuban nationals jailed in Miami on spying charges in 1998.

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