US lifts Cuba travel sanctions, curbs on telecom links

US president Barack Obama is lifting some restrictions on Cuban Americans' contact with Cuba and allowing US telecom companies to operate there, opening up the communist island nation to more cellular and satellite service, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs announced at his regular news briefing on Monday.

The US introduced the ban on American citizens traveling to Cuba with other sanctions in the early 1960s when Fidel Castro's revolution turned Cuba into a Soviet ally.

The new decision does not lift the trade embargo on Cuba but eases the prohibitions that have restricted Cuban Americans from visiting their relatives and has limited what they can send back home.

It also allows companies to establish fibre-optic and satellite links between the United States and Cuba and will permit US companies to be licensed for roaming agreements in Cuba.

Communications of those kinds have been prohibited under tough rules put in place by George W Bush's administration to pressure for democratic change in the island nation.

But under the new policy promoted by Obama, satellite radio companies and television providers will also be able to enter into transactions necessary to provide service to Cuban citizens.

It will also provide an exception to the trade embargo to allow personal cell phones, computes and satellite receivers to be sent to Cuba.

During the first week of April, members of the US House of Representatives led by Barbara Lee visited Havana to meet with Cuban officials.

  The congressional delegation was the first from the United States to visit Cuba since Obama took office in January. (See: Obama to revive US-Cuba family ties).

''All who embrace core democratic values long for a Cuba that respects the basic human, political and economic rights of all of its citizens,'' Gibbs said, adding that ''president Obama believes the measure he has taken today, will help make that goal a reality.''

As a candidate, Obama promised to seek closer relations with Cuba, and courted Cuban voters in the key state of Florida. As president, he has signaled that he intends to move toward a greater openness.

Senator John F Kerry, chairman of the foreign affairs committee, praised the move. ''President Obama has made the right call. . . ," he said in a statement. ''These changes are both compassionate and responsive to reality.''

A White House aide said the president believes that democratic change will come to the Cuban nation more quickly if the United States reaches out to the people of Cuba and their relatives in the United States.

But the move is highly controversial, especially among those who supported Bush's hardline policy and view the restrictions as a way of spurring political change.
However, House representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart (Republican-Florida) criticised the move saying that it was a ''serious mistake.''

In a statement posted online, he said, ''unilateral concessions to the dictatorship embolden it to further isolate, imprison and brutalise pro-democracy activists, to continue to dictate which Cubans and Cuban-Americans are able to enter the island, and this unilateral concession provides the dictatorship with critical financial support.''

President Obama's administration takes a somewhat different view than the Bush administration, but has resisted a wholesale elimination of the trade embargo and travel ban, which has been pushed for by some in Congress.