Obama softens Cuba stance by lifting restrictions
Barack Obama softens series of travel and money transfer restrictions levied on Cuban Americans
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Tuesday, 14, Apr 2009 12:51
United States citizens will be allowed to visit their relatives in Cuba after Barack Obama lifted a series of restrictions regulating cooperation between the two countries.
The longstanding ban on Americans visiting relatives on the island has been abolished, and the charges levied on money sent back to family members have been reduced. Americans are no longer prohibited from sending basic items like clothes, seeds and fishing equipment to Cuba and there is a raft of initiatives to stimulate better communication links between the two countries.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said: "All who embrace core democratic values long for a Cuba that respects basic human, political and economic rights of all its citizens. President Obama believes these measures will help make that goal a reality.
"Supporting the Cuban people's desire to freely determine their future and that of their country is in the national interest of the United States.
"The Obama administration is taking steps to promote greater contact between separated family members in the United States and Cuba and increase the flow of remittances and information to the Cuban people."
Thawing relations with Cuba has long been high on President Obama's diplomatic agenda after the Bush administration's repeated refusal to engage with either Fidel or Raul Castro.
Sanctions were first imposed on Cuba in 1962 when the Castro government pursued an alliance with the Soviet Union, culminating in the Cuban missile crisis, generally regarded as the closest the world ever came to nuclear war.