Rubio-Clinton Skirmish on Cuba

A preview of what might be to come in 2016

HAVANA TIMES – Sen. Marco Rubio harshly criticized former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday, after she revealed in her memoirs that she had recommended to President Barack Obama to end the economic embargo on Cuba, reported dpa news.

While Cuba policy is usually a non-issue in US presidential election campaigns (except in Florida) the possibility that Clinton and Rubio could end up facing each other in the 2016 elections might make the embargo a national topic of debate.

“Now we see how far Secretary Clinton came to undermine the defenders of democracy in Cuba to try to help the Castro regime get more dollars with which to continue their repression,” Rubio said.

The Florida senator considered it “astonishing” that Hillary Clinton wrote in her memoirs that the embargo on the island, enacted in 1960 by U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower against the government of Fidel Castro, has impeded progress of the US policy agenda in Latin America.

“The truth is that this administration has no coherent agenda for Latin America,” said Rubio, who said that the only agenda that Obama has in the region is “alienating our allies and allowing our adversaries to ruthlessly trample the democratic aspirations of their peoples.”

The Republican senator added, “the disasters we see today in the foreign policy of President Obama are the fruits of the seeds planted by Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state.”

“No surprise here,” said Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen the diehard anti-Castro advocate, on her Twitter account, after some of the contents of the memoirs of the former first lady were revealed.

Hillary Clinton advised Obama to end the half century plus economic embargo on Cuba saying it has only given Fidel and Raul Castro an excuse not to make democratic reforms and “someone to blame for the economic problems of Cuba,” according to extracts from her memoirs leaked to the press.

The former head of US diplomacy explains in her autobiography that she urged Obama to reconsider the embargo because “is not achieving its objectives” and “is obstructing the scope of our agenda in Latin America.”

Hillary Clinton’s autobiography, entitled “Hard Choices,” will be released on June 10 in the United States, but some US media obtained a copy and revealed some details, including her controversial statements on the Cuba embargo.

Her memoirs are being examined closely by the US press, even more so because the former first lady is considered one of the favorites to be the Democratic candidate in the 2016 election.

For his part, Marcos Rubio is one of several potential candidates for the Republican nomination.