Is it time to end Cuba ban from regional assembly?

Key U.S. senators and most Cuban exile leaders are up in arms over the Organization of American States’ move to lift Cuba’s decades-old suspension from the group, and possibly readmit it. But perhaps they should welcome the debate, and turn it against Cuba’s military dictatorship.

OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza has repeatedly called on the 34-country organization to consider lifting the 1962 suspension of Cuba at its June 2 General Assembly in Honduras, and to allow member countries to decide whether to readmit Cuba.

Insulza told me that the OAS resolution suspending Cuba is obsolete, because it was based on that country’s previous ties with the former Soviet bloc. So the OAS should lift Cuba’s suspension and “start a conversation” among member countries to decide whether to readmit Cuba, he said.

The Obama administration has said only that it opposes Cuba’s readmission, citing the 2001 Inter-American Democratic Charter, which requires member countries to respect democratic principles. Cuba claims that it doesn’t want to belong because the OAS is a tool of “U.S. imperialism.” Any OAS decision to readmit Cuba has to be approved by consensus.

Last week, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., chairman of the Senate subcommittee in charge of foreign aid and one of the most influential voices on Latin American affairs in Washington, introduced a “Sense of the Congress” resolution threatening to cut off U.S. funds to the OAS if Cuba is allowed to rejoin. U.S. funding makes up about 60 percent of the OAS budget.

“We all have to ask ourselves, is the Inter-American Democratic Charter something we take seriously, or is it a joke?” Menendez asked in a May 14 speech. “If we take it seriously, how can we invite a regime that repudiates it?”

Indeed, Article 1 of the Charter states that member countries “have an obligation to promote and defend” democracy. Furthermore, Article 3 states that the “essential elements of representative democracy” include “respect for human rights,” holding “periodic, free and fair elections based on secret balloting,” and a “pluralistic system of political parties.”

According to diplomatic sources participating in OAS sessions in Washington, there are three different proposals for the June 2 meeting:

Option 1: Ecuador, Nicaragua and a few other countries favor lifting the OAS suspension on Cuba.

Option 2: Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and most other South American countries are calling for lifting the OAS suspension and simultaneously submitting to the OAS Permanent Council the question of whether — in accordance with OAS rules — Cuba should be readmitted.

Option 3: The United States and several Caribbean countries want to ask the OAS Inter-American Justice Committee for a study on what it would take — in accordance with OAS rules — to lift Cuba’s suspension.

In Cuba’s hands

Asked about the U.S. position, a U.S. official told me the Obama administration is “willing to consider a process that could lead to lifting the suspension” of the Cuban government from the OAS, but that “any effort to admit Cuba is really in Cuba’s hands.” The official added that Cuba would have to take concrete steps, such as releasing political prisoners and allowing democratic freedoms.

My opinion: The Obama administration should support a modified version of No. 2. Lifting Cuba’s suspension would not automatically allow Cuba back in, because the OAS adopted its Democratic Charter in 2001, nearly four decades after Cuba’s suspension. This means that Cuba would have to abide by the new OAS Charter to be readmitted.

But the lifting of Cuba’s suspension should be attached to a formal request from the OAS General Assembly — in keeping with its Democratic Charter obligation to “promote and defend” democracy — that the island allow political parties and free elections so that it can be readmitted.

Of course, Cuba’s generals will refuse to do so. And Venezuela and its followers will side with them. But that would be their problem.

X Andres Oppenheimer is a Latin America correspondent for the Miami Herald. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.