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Monday, March 10, 2008
US President George W. Bush said that Cuba had replaced one dictator with another, and vowed to maintain hard-line policies against the communist-ruled island, until it begins a democratic transition. Bush insisted that Fidel Castro, despite having stepped aside last month and turned over the presidency to his brother Raul, is still influencing events from behind the scenes. Speaking after a White House meeting with Cuban dissidents, he made clear he thought his critics had been wrong to see the ailing Cuban leader's retirement as a chance to reconsider, a decades-old US trade embargo. Fidel Castro, who for decades has accused Washington of imperialism in the hemisphere, has said the kind of change Bush demands, in Cuba, would be tantamount to U.S. "annexation" of the island.
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