End Cuba embargo, says Jesse Jackson
Reverend Jesse Jackson of the U.S., symbolically crowned Prince Nana Aka Essoin, raises a staff at Krindjabo, a village in southern Ivory Coast, August 12, 2009. The US civil rights leader, has urged the United States to end its decades-old sanctions regime on Communist Cuba, official media said yesterday. PHOTO/FILE
HAVANA,
US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson has urged the United States to end its decades-old sanctions regime on Communist Cuba, official media said yesterday.
Jackson made the remarks at Ebenezer Baptist church in Havana’s Mariano neighborhood, the official news agency Prensa Latina reported.
The United States has had a full economic embargo clamped on Havana since 1961. The US sanctions have outlived the Cold War and have not brought down the Communist Cuban government now led by President Raul Castro, 82.
The United States has said that when Cuba has multiparty elections, it will engage with that government.
But the current Cuban government rejects any suggestion of a multiparty system. On his third visit to Cuba, it was not immediately clear if Jackson would meet with Cuban authorities.
But on Saturday he agreed to a request from Colombian guerrillas to help mediate the release of a US military veteran the rebels captured in June.
In a statement published on the website of the daily El Tiempo, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) asked Jackson to help expedite the release of Kevin Scott Sutay, who was captured in the central-eastern Colombian region of Guaviare when he traveled through the area as a tourist.
Jackson inserted himself in the matter two weeks ago during a global forum of black leaders in Colombia, when he called on the guerrillas to free the American.
