• Submitted by: manso
• Politics and Government
• 03 / 25 / 2011

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Written by James R. Carroll.courier-journal.com. WASHINGTON — Just back from a trip to Cuba, U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth said Friday that it’s time for the United States to normalize relations with its island neighbor.

“Nobody is winning from our policy there,” the 3rd District Democrat said in an interview. “We aren’t winning and they aren’t winning. There’s no question it’s time to normalize relations.”

The United States has maintained an economic embargo on Cuba since October 1960, after the previous year’s establishment of a communist government by Fidel Castro.

Yarmuth and Democratic Reps. Steve Cohen of Tennessee and Donna Edwards of Maryland spent four days in Cuba. They met in Havana and other cities with government leaders, U.S. officials, scholars, economists, foreign diplomats, physicians, artists, farmers and journalists.

The trip was sponsored by the Center for Democracy in the Americas, a nonpartisan group whose goal is to open Cuba and improve U.S. relations with that nation and others in Latin America.

The Cuban people have no animosity towards Americans, Yarmuth said, though there is distrust of the U.S. government going back to the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.

“Clearly, there is a desire for better relations with the United States,” the Louisville congressman said.

In January the Obama administration eased restrictions on travel to Cuba, expanded U.S. airports serving Cuba with chartered flights and loosened regulations to allow Americans to send money to Cuban citizens.

Such actions, the White House said, combined with the continuation of the embargo, “are important steps in reaching the widely shared goal of a Cuba that respects the basic rights of all its citizens.”

But the embargo has failed to change anything in Cuba, Yarmuth said.

A gradual lifting of economic sanctions would help improve the economic situation of the Cuban people, he said.

Source: www.courier-journal.com/article/20110325/NEWS01/303250068/-1/