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Castro criticizes Obama's Cuba measures; Moves fall short of lifting 'cruel' embargo...

Cuba’s Fidel Castro has wasted no time taking Barack Obama, US president, to task over his removal this week of limits on travel by Cuban Americans to their homeland and how much money they can send to relatives.The former leader said the measures fell far short of removing a “cruel” US embargo.Mr Castro, who has recently started showing signs of greater activity after being forced into retirement by illness, promised his country would fight, not beg, for an end to the US embargo, which he characterised as a genocidal policy.“Cuba has resisted and it will continue to resist; it will never beg for alms...not a word was said about the harshest of measures: the blockade,” Mr Castro said in a response posted on the internet and published by state-run media just hours after the news broke in Washington.Mr Obama’s executive order on Monday also did away with some restrictions for US telecommunications companies, allowing them to provide mobile phone and internet services, a big complaint of Cuba’s in the past.The White House announcement came ahead of a Summit of the Americas that starts on Friday in Trinidad and Tobago. Mr Obama is expected to come under pressure from regional leaders over US policy and its being the only country in the Americas without normal diplomatic and trade relations with Cuba.“Now, the only thing left is for Obama to try to persuade all of the Latin American presidents attending the conference that the blockade is harmless,” Mr Castro said.
President Raúl Castro, who took over from his brother last year, is the only area leader excluded from the summit. However, he is expected to attend a two-day conference in Venezuela with some of the area’s most radical heads of state before they travel on to Trinidad and Tobago without him.Mr Obama has said he wants dialogue and improved relations with Cuba, but that the embargo should be maintained until the Cuban government shows progress on democracy and human rights.Fidel Castro said he did not blame Mr Obama for past US policy towards Cuba, but added: “The conditions are created for Obama to use his talent in a constructive policy that puts an end to what has failed for the past half century.”He pointed out that Raúl Castro had expressed willingness to hold US talks on the basis of equality and without preconditions.
●Bolivia’s Congress approved a controversial electoral law on Tuesday after Evo Morales, the leftwing president, went on hunger strike for nearly five days to protest against opposition lawmakers blocking the bill, Reuters reports from La Paz.
The law sets presidential and congressional elections for December 6, assigns a small number of congressional seats to poor, indigenous areas where Mr Morales is popular and allows Bolivian expatriates to vote for the first time.Opposition leaders had claimed the bill would give the government an unfair electoral advantage. Recent polls suggest that Mr Morales, the country’s first Indian president and a fierce critic of Washington, is likely to win re-election.
By Marc Frank in Havana
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