Gail Alexan­der

US Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma be­lieves that this is not the time to lift the em­bar­go on Cu­ba, ac­cord­ing to the US Em­bassy. Act­ing pub­lic af­fairs of­fi­cer of the em­bassy, Alexan­der McLaren, is­sued the state­ment yes­ter­day fol­low­ing Thurs­day's calls from CARI­COM chair­man Dr Den­zil Dou­glas and Cuban Pres­i­dent Raul Cas­tro for the US to re­move its long­stand­ing trade em­bar­go against Cu­ba. The calls came at Thurs­day's CARI­COM-Cu­ba sum­mit in Port-of-Spain. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar who al­so spoke at the sum­mit open­ing, not­ed that CARI­COM states at the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly in Oc­to­ber had pledged sup­port for calls for the US to lift the em­bar­go.

How­ev­er, the US Em­bassy stat­ed yes­ter­day: "The Amer­i­can peo­ple are al­ready the largest providers of hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid to the Cuban peo­ple, and the Unit­ed States is Cu­ba's fifth largest trad­ing part­ner." "The US has been Cu­ba's largest sup­pli­er of food and agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts for the last five years. In 2010, Cu­ba pur­chased over $300 mil­lion in food and agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts from the Unit­ed States. These prod­ucts in­clud­ed poul­try, soy­bean prod­ucts, corn, wheat, feeds, pork and oth­er items." "The Unit­ed States re­mains Cu­ba's top sup­pli­er of food as well as one of Cu­ba's top sup­pli­ers of med­ical equip­ment."

The state­ment added, "We con­tin­ue to be­lieve that the em­bar­go pro­vides an im­por­tant source of lever­age for fur­ther pos­i­tive change on the is­land. "The ad­min­is­tra­tion has al­so tak­en steps to im­prove con­di­tions for Cuban cit­i­zens through ini­tia­tives aimed at in­creas­ing the flow of in­for­ma­tion, re­sources and hu­man­i­tar­i­an re­lief to Cu­ba." The sum­mit took place against the back­drop of changes Gov­ern­ment was forced to make when the US au­thor­i­ties blanked the US-man­aged Hilton's ap­pli­ca­tion to host the Cuban del­e­ga­tion and the sum­mit at­tend­ed by the Cubans.