U.S., in fresh overture, proposes Cuba migration talks

By Susan Cornwell and Arshad Mohammed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department said on Friday it had offered to resume talks with Cuba about Cuban migration to the United States, a fresh sign of U.S. President Barack Obama's effort to engage the communist state.

The talks, last held in 2003 and suspended by Washington in 2004, cover a mid-1990s agreement that aimed to prevent an exodus of Cuban refugees to the United States such as the 1980 Mariel boatlift and another wave of boat people in 1994.

"We have offered to resume the talks," State Department spokeswoman Heide Bronke said, saying the offer was made at a meeting with Cuban diplomats in Washington at 4:30 p.m. EDT on Friday.

Bronke said she did not know whether the Cuban government responded positively to the U.S. overture.

Predictably, the Obama administration's latest gesture to Cuba drew mixed reviews from the Cuban American community, with some blasting it as a "unilateral concession" to a dictatorial regime and others hailing it as step toward better relations.

Obama on April 13 decided to ease limits on family travel to Cuba and to allow U.S. telecom companies to operate on the communist-run island, a sign that analysts said could mark the beginning of the end of the 50-year-old U.S. embargo.

Analysts interpreted the latest move as a further token of Obama's desire to reach out to Cuba as he has to other nations such as Iran and Syria with which the United States has had strained relations for decades.

"It's a very positive initial step. It's consistent with the tone that we've seen from the Obama administration so far, as well as Cuba under Raul Castro. We've seen a new willingness to engage on both sides," said Lilia Lopez, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America.

Raul Castro took over Cuba's presidency when his brother, longtime U.S. nemesis Fidel Castro who seized power in a 1959 revolution, stepped aside because of health reasons in 2006.

'WHY CONDITIONS?'

Lopez said the talks were in the interests of the United States to decrease the chances of a mass exodus of Cubans like the flood of refugees who left in 1980 and then again in 1994.

The 1995 migration accord sought to put a definitive end to mass sea-borne migration. It established the repatriation to Cuba by U.S. authorities of Cuban migrants intercepted at sea, and Havana also pledged to halt illegal migration bids.

In the same accord, the United States agreed to foster legal migration by granting at least 20,000 U.S. visas to Cubans each year.

The administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush suspended the talks in January 2004, saying Cuba had stymied them by refusing to discuss key issues such as giving exit permits to all Cubans who get U.S. visas.

Three Cuban-American members of Congress, who fiercely oppose any easing of U.S. sanctions on Cuba unless Havana agrees to free detained dissidents and open up more political freedoms, criticized the U.S. offer to resume talks.