Word: cuba
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...member states of the Organization of American States (OAS), including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, gather this week in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, for its general assembly, the region's powers themselves are grappling with their own powerfully symbolic diplomatic dilemma: how to readmit communist Cuba while adhering to an OAS charter whose rules require democratic government...
...seem easy at first to argue that Cuba's 1962 suspension from the hemispheric multilateral organization, like the embargo, is a Cold War relic, one that might have been understandable during the Cuban missile crisis but makes little sense two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union. (It's also hypocritical, Cuba backers say, since brutal right-wing dictatorships like Augusto Pinochet's Chile were never suspended.) But that case is undermined by the OAS's 2001 Inter-American Democratic Charter - approved on 9/11 - which mandates that members adhere to democratic norms like multiparty elections and free speech...
...task in San Pedro Sula is to find a compromise between proposals put forth in recent days by Nicaragua and Honduras, whose leftist governments are calling for the immediate lifting of the suspension, and the Obama Administration, which says now that it too supports readmitting Cuba but only if Havana takes "the concrete steps necessary to meet those [democratic] principles," Clinton told Congress recently. On Sunday, ahead of the OAS gathering, State Department officials reportedly confirmed that Cuba had accepted Washington's recent offer to restart talks on legal immigration and mail service, talks that were suspended by the Bush...
...Diplomats tell TIME that major Latin broker countries like Brazil are stepping in now to help hammer out a deal palatable to both Washington and Havana - one that would probably demand a lesser gesture of democratic commitment on Cuba's part, like the release of political prisoners. But they also suggest that the General Assembly may end up deciding to simply hold a yearlong "dialogue" on the matter, to allow the U.S. and Cuba to ease into a compromise that would be unveiled...
...diplomatic wrangling over Cuba's OAS membership, it's not at all clear that the island nation has any real interest in rejoining the organization. Cuban President Raúl Castro and his brother, former President Fidel Castro, insist they won't accept any conditions. "We do not wish to be part of" the OAS, Fidel wrote this month, calling its criticism of Cuba's human-rights record "pure garbage." What the OAS should decide in San Pedro Sula, he added, "is to expel the U.S. and start from scratch with a new organization that will defend the interests...