Bush Allows Sending Cell Phones to Cuba

WASHINGTON — President Bush announced a U.S. policy change Wednesday to allow Americans to send cell phones to Cuba, a country he said relies on the suppression of information and political dissent to maintain the "personal despotism" that has propped up nearly five decades of rule by the Castro family.

"The day will come when Cubans freely receive information from many sources," Bush said in a White House address marking a so-called "day of solidarity" meant to highlight international support for Cuba's pro-democracy activists. "The day will come when Cubans can speak their dissent ... (and) choose their own leaders by voting in free and fair elections."

A small yet potentially important step, said Bush, would be to provide Cubans with something many lack: dial tone.

In a policy reversal, Bush said that, within weeks, Americans would be able to send to Cubans cell phones bought, with service contracts, in this country.

Currently, cell phones are widely used by the wealthiest 20 percent of the nation's 11 million residents, according to the head of a non-government organization that's active in Cuba.

A new cell phone costs at least $120 in Cuba - three or four times the monthly income of the average Cuban worker - with starter service contracts costing about the same.

"It's out of the reach of at least 50 percent of the economy that relies on the Cuban peso," said the NGO official, who insisted on anonymity to protect his organization's ability to operate freely within Cuba. Providing free cell phones from the United States "could have an immediate effect" for many Cubans, the official said.

Bush also reiterated an earlier offer to allow human rights organizations and others to distribute free computers to Cubans, if Havana would agree to lift restrictions on access to the Internet.

Bush extended the offers in remarks beamed into Cuba by powerful U.S. transmitters, part of a broader administration effort to barrage with information the same nation Washington seeks to squeeze with an economic embargo that dates to the Eisenhower administration.

Bush made the remarks as a task force for the Council on Foreign Relations, an influential New York-based policy group, recommended that the United States end the embargo, which has prohibited most U.S.-Cuba commerce since 1960, the year after Fidel Castro seized control of the government in Havana.

Castro, 81, underwent intestinal surgery in July, 2006, and handed over effective control of the country to his younger brother, Raul.

The Council on Foreign Relations task force concluded that the "stable succession" of Raul to head of state had "challenged the effectiveness of a half-century of U.S. economic sanctions," leaving the United States with only limited influence over a country just 90 miles off the coast of Florida.

Rather than perpetuating the isolation of Cuba, the task force concluded, "the United States should initiate a series of steps, with the aim of lifting the embargo against Cuba."

The recommendation was part of a broader task force report meant to be a blueprint for improved Latin American relations for the president who replaces Bush in January.

Like nine other presidents before him, Bush has enforced the economic embargo against Cuba, justifying it on the basis of Havana's continuing repression of political dissent and its poor human rights record.

"Today, after nearly a half-century of repression, Cuba still suffers under the personal despotism of Fidel and Raul Castro," Bush said.

"On the dictators' watch, Cuba's political freedoms have been denied. Families have been torn apart. The island's economy has been reduced to shambles," said Bush. "Political dissidents continue to be harassed, detained and beaten, and more than 200 prisoners of conscience still languish in Castro's tropical gulag."

In the East Room audience were family members of several political prisoners, including Olga Alonso, of Miami. Her brother, Gonzalez Alfonso, is a journalist who was arrested in a 2003 crackdown on pro-democracy activists and journalists. He is serving a 20-year prison sentence in Cuba.

Also attending was Miguel Sigler Amaya, of Miami, who is a former political prisoner in Cuba and the brother of two current political prisoners - Ariel and Guido.