US-CUBA: NGOs Hail Congressional Moves to Ease Embargo

[Judi Lynn]

US-CUBA: NGOs Hail Congressional Moves to Ease Embargo
By Jim Lobe*

WASHINGTON, Mar 11 (IPS) - Leading advocates for lifting the nearly 50-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba are hailing Congress's approval Tuesday of a general appropriations bill that eases - albeit in a mostly symbolic way - several restrictions on travel and sales to the Caribbean nation.

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A Bush-imposed regulation had required that businesses wishing to sell their products in Cuba had to apply for a specific license to go there on a case-by-case basis, a cumbersome and sometimes protracted process that discouraged many companies from going through the process.

"For the first time in almost a decade, Congress is acting to loosen the Cuba embargo and send these modest reforms to a president who has promised to change the policy rather than issue veto threats or keep things as they are," asserted a joint statement by several groups, including the Centre for Democracy in the Americas (CDA) and the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).

"When we have a Congress and a president acting to make sensible changes in Cuba policy, this indicates to us that the ground has shifted and that there is momentum behind the efforts to make broader and more lasting changes in policy," said the groups, which also included the U.S.-Cuba Policy Initiative of the New America Foundation (NAF) and the Latin America Working Group here.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46074