Brasilia - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Wednesday described Democratic candidate Barack Obama's victory as an "extraordinary event" and asked the US president-elect to lift the decades-old embargo on communist Cuba. Lula said Obama's historic rise underlined the democratic aspects of US society. "It could only happen in a democratic regime in which society expresses itself."

The Brazilian president also expressed a desire for the next US president to end the US-imposed embargo on Cuba. "We await the end of the blockade on Cuba, because there is no explanation for that blockade."

Lula, however, also cautioned that there is "a very big difference between winning an election and governing a country like the United States ... Let us wait until he is inaugurated to see what happens."

He urged Obama to have "a stronger and bolder relationship with Latin America and Africa," and said that Obama could seal "a peace agreement with the Middle East, where a deal has been sought for decades and decades and has not been achieved."

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/24...ba-embargo.html

Brasilia - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Wednesday described Democratic candidate Barack Obama's victory as an "extraordinary event" and asked the US president-elect to lift the decades-old embargo on communist Cuba. Lula said Obama's historic rise underlined the democratic aspects of US society. "It could only happen in a democratic regime in which society expresses itself."

The Brazilian president also expressed a desire for the next US president to end the US-imposed embargo on Cuba. "We await the end of the blockade on Cuba, because there is no explanation for that blockade."

Lula, however, also cautioned that there is "a very big difference between winning an election and governing a country like the United States ... Let us wait until he is inaugurated to see what happens."

He urged Obama to have "a stronger and bolder relationship with Latin America and Africa," and said that Obama could seal "a peace agreement with the Middle East, where a deal has been sought for decades and decades and has not been achieved."

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/24...ba-embargo.html

The embargo has lasted as long as it has thanks to the Cuban expats in Florida, loud and influential far beyond their numbers, and the stateside politicians they have made their patsies. Its main effect has been to cement Castro in power and keep the Cuban people in third-world conditions. I understand that the born-in-the-USA descendants of the original expats feel less passionately about the subject, the Elian Gonzalez incident notwithstanding. That could make it easier to lift the embargo, especially if Fidel finally snuffs it, though it might still require our guys to grow a pair.