Carl Leubsdorf: Obama can lead or follow on Cuba

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Carl Leubsdorf: Obama can lead or follow on Cuba | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Opinion: Viewpoints

" The new look in American foreign policy is expected to reach the Western Hemisphere next week. It can't come too soon.

Indeed, even before President Barack Obama formally takes the first step toward expanding U.S. relations with Cuba, an unusual coalition of business groups and members of Congress from both parties is pressing him to do even more and more quickly.

Obama is expected to lift restrictions on the ability of Cuban-Americans to travel to their homeland and to send funds to family members there. It's something he promised in the campaign. His timing is presumably designed to set a positive tone before next week's Fifth Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago.

But aides say he is not ready to end the 47-year U.S. trade embargo against the Cuban regime and allow Americans unlimited travel there.

Still, Obama risks being forced into action if he fails to act."

Just last week, a bipartisan group of senators, including significant figures from both parties, introduced a bill to prevent the president from stopping travel to Cuba except in cases of war, imminent danger to public health or threats to Americans.

Co-sponsors included Sens. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, a senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee; Dick Lugar of Indiana, the panel's ranking Republican; and Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming, the top Republican on the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee.

They basically endorsed Lugar's view that the trade embargo is a failure that "has not furthered progress in human rights or democracy in Cuba and has come at the expense of other direct and regional strategic U.S. interests."

Supporters include such key business groups as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and American Farm Bureau and trade groups representing the rice, wheat and dairy industries.

A similar bill has 120 sponsors in the House, which has voted several times in recent years to drop limits on U.S. travel to Cuba and trade with the country that has been such a foreign policy headache since Fidel Castro seized control a half-century ago.

These efforts never went anywhere because of strong Bush administration opposition. Today, the political climate is changing in both countries. "