Woos Cuban exiles: President to tighten travel restrictions, help dissidents
 
 Isabel Vincent
 National Post.com

In an effort to improve his re-election hopes among Cuban exiles in Florida next year, George W. Bush vowed
yesterday to impose tougher sanctions on the Communist island and step up efforts to aid dissident movement
there.

The measures, which include a crackdown on U.S. citizens travelling to Cuba and an increase in anti-Castro
propaganda, seem specifically targeted at the exile community in Miami, whose leaders have been very critical
of the U.S. President's policies on Cuba.

They say Mr. Bush has not fulfilled campaign promises to work against Fidel Castro, the Cuban dictator. Many
Cuban exiles in Miami say they would like to see Mr. Bush take the same initiative against the Castro regime as
he did against the government of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

There are 400,000 registered Cuban-American voters in Florida, which holds 27 electoral votes and was the state
that gave Mr. Bush his razor-thin victory in 2000.

"It's unfortunate that it took the ire of the Cuban-American community to force the President to live up to some
of his obligations to the community," said one of the Cub an leaders in Miami, who did not want to be identified.
"There was a lot of smoke in his speech, but it's hard to see the fire."

But other observers described the measures outlined in yesterday's speech as extremely important.

"This is the most substantive statement to come out of the White House on Cuba in the last three years," said
Hans de Salas, research associate at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American studies at the University of
Miami. "There's really nothing new in the speech. What is new is the political will to enforce it."

Mr. Bush said the administration would help dissident movements by providing communications equipment, such
as fax machines and phones, to help get their message across. Washington will also step up its anti-Castro
broadcasts on Radio and TV Marti. Previously, the Cuban government has successfully jammed the U.S.
propaganda signal.

"Clearly, the Castro regime will not change by its own choice, but Cuba must change," Mr. Bush said. "The
dictator has responded with defiance and contempt and a new round of brutal oppression that outraged the
world's conscience."

He cited the imprisonment of 75 dissidents last spring, some of whom received life sentences for writing
pro-democracy articles in foreign papers.

"The goal is to strengthen the internal opposition movement in Cuba," Mr. de Salas said. "In this way, it is
parallel to Eastern Europe in the 1980s prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the West aided dissidents to fight
against communist regimes."

Mr. Bush also announced tougher restrictions on travel to the island. U.S. citizens will only be permitted to travel
to Cuba for humanitarian and research-related reasons, he said. All other travel will be banned, and the
Department of Homeland Security will be instructed to toughen enforcement of the restrictions.

An estimated 200,000 non-Cuban Americans currently make pleasure trips to Cuba every year, skirting the rules
by travelling through third countries, such as the Bahamas and Mexico.

"U.S. law forbids Americans to travel to Cuba for pleasure,"Mr. Bush said. "We allow travel for limited reasons,
including visits to a family, to bring humanitarian aid or to conduct research. Those exceptions are too often used
as cover for illegal business travel and tourism or to skirt the restrictions on carrying cash into Cuba."

The U.S. President announced plans to set up a presidential commission to examine the transition to democracy
in the country after the death of Mr. Castro. The commission will be headed by Colin Powell, the Secretary of
State, and co-chaired by Mel Martinez, a Cuban-American who heads the Department of Housing and Urban
Development in Washington.