Obama faces heat from Cuban exiles

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MIAMI — Sen. Barack Obama will have to defend his support for easier negotiations with America's enemies when he addresses a leading Cuban-American exile group this week during his first campaign stop in Florida in nine months.

The professed desire by the likely Democratic presidential nominee to hold direct talks with Cuba's communist leaders if elected has evoked the ire of some Cuban groups in Florida, who maintain that no such talk should be held until real democratic reform takes place on the island.

"Barack said he would be willing to conduct talks with Cuban leaders to advance democracy and liberty on the island," a senior adviser to Mr. Obama's campaign told The Washington Times on the condition of anonymity.

"I recognize they may not be in total agreement with the means of this policy," the adviser said in reference to Cuban exile groups. "But there can be no disagreement on the goal."

Mr. Obama addresses the Cuban American National Foundation at a lunch meeting Friday in Miami as part of a three-day swing through Florida that starts in Tampa and Maitland on Wednesday and continues in South Florida on Thursday and Friday.

The Obama campaign has announced at least one large public rally in the state — at the St. Pete Times Forum in Tampa on Wednesday.

The Miami stop will follow Republican candidate Sen. John McCain's arrival here on Tuesday, the anniversary of Cuban independence, when he is expected to discuss his policy toward the communist island in a speech at the Sheraton Miami Mart Hotel.

The two leading candidates for the White House have widely divergent takes on U.S. policy toward Cuba.

In addition to favoring talks with Cuban leaders like President Raul Castro, Mr. Obama said if elected he would loosen restrictions on travel and sending money for those Cuban-Americans with family on the island.

Mr. McCain favors maintaining the Bush administration's hard-line policy on Cuba — restricting Cuban-American travel to visits to immediate family every three years. The McCain camp expressed confidence that in a general election pitting the Arizona senator against Mr. Obama, Floridians would keep the Illinois lawmaker's Cuba policy in mind come Election Day.

"Senator Obama's weak judgment to unconditionally meet with rogue regimes will be an issue that voters in Florida will reject," said Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for the McCain campaign.

Some Cuban exile groups like the Directorio Cubano in Miami agree with that assessment.

"We think there should be no negotiations or conversation with Raul Castro until he has released all political prisoners and made moves toward democracy," said Orlando Gutierrez, Directorio Cubano's national secretary.

However, Mr. Gutierrez did say his group was in favor of Mr. Obama's proposal to ease restrictions on travel and remittances by Cuban-Americans even though the group "was not too enthusiastic about it" when he first proposed it during a debate against fellow Democrat Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"Support [among some Cubans] has been growing in favor of having Cuban-Americans traveling to the island and sending money there," said William LeoGrande, dean of the school of public affairs at American University and a Cuba scholar, noting that older Cubans, who tend to vote Republican, are less likely to still have family living in Cuba.

"Bush administration policies on Cuba are popular among older Cubans, but not as much among those younger Cubans who still have family on the island," Mr. LeoGrande said.

Apart from the Cuban issue, Florida poses a difficult challenge for Mr. Obama since the state population has a heavier-than-most concentration of elderly, other Hispanics and working-class voters — all groups that favored Mrs. Clinton in the Democratic primaries. The state is also only about 15 percent black — one of the smallest percentages in the South.

In addition, because Mr. Obama did not actively campaign for Florida's Jan. 29 primary, his state campaign organization is not as well organized as it is elsewhere. The national party stripped Florida of its delegates for breaking the party's rules on early primaries, and Mr. Obama and other Democratic candidates shunned the state.