Bush Sets Tough Conditions for Easing Cuba Embargo

Brushing aside recent overtures of improved Cuban-American relations, the US president, George Bush, today rejected calls to loosen a 40-year-old trade embargo and branded the Cuban president, Fidel Castro, "a relic from another era".

In a speech at the White House marking Cuban independence day, Mr Bush said Cuba's legacy of freedom "has been insulted by a tyrant who used brutal methods to enforce a bankrupt vision".

He said Mr Castro's vision of a communist revolutionary Cuba had debased the country and turned it "into a prison".

Speaking at times in Spanish, Mr Bush laid out strict conditions for the lifting of the embargo, including the release of political prisoners and independently monitored elections.

"Freedom sometimes grows step by step, and we will encourage those steps," Mr Bush said, outlining his new policy toward Cuba.

Seeking to balance the hard-line policy with sensitivity to Cuba's grinding poverty, however, the president also outlined steps his administration will take to try to make life better for the Cuban people. One initiative would resume direct mail service to and from Cuba.

His speech came just days after former president Jimmy Carter made an historic visit to Havana, addressing the Cuban people directly on television. He called for Mr Castro to embrace democratic reform and for Mr Bush to end the strict US sanctions on the country. Mr Carter, human rights groups and dozens of lawmakers from both parties have called the embargo - imposed after Mr Castro seized power in the 1959 communist revolution - a failure.

Ordinary US citizens are banned from travelling to Cuba or importing Cuban goods such as cigars, and those breaking the embargo face prison or fines. People with family in Cuba are allowed one visit per year.

Later today Mr Bush was travelling to Miami to address Cuban-Americans eager to hear his anti-Castro rhetoric. His brother, Jeb Bush, is governor of Florida and seeks political support from Cuban-Americans.

Despite his support for the trade embargo, Mr Bush said he would cut US bureaucratic hurdles that hamper American aid groups from working in Cuba, and would send taxpayer money to non-governmental groups that want to help in Cuba.

He also supported establishing scholarships in the US for Cuban students and professionals trying to assemble independent institutions and for relatives of political prisoners.

An Amnesty International report released today on the country's human rights record claimed there were currently six political prisoners, or "prisoners of conscience", imprisoned in Cuba, a marked improvement over the year before.

However the organisation said the Cuban government had moved away from long term imprisonment to suppress calls for political change and now relied on less obvious methods of intimidation, including eviction, travel restrictions, house arrest and telephone bugging.

"Although the number of prisoners of conscience has decreased significantly, dissidents are still being targeted both by state officials and government supporters. It is high time the Cuban government stopped stifling non-violent dissent," an Amnesty International statement said.