//TRW//

HAVANA (Reuters, with additional reporting by The Costa Rica Star) Cuba said it would welcome President Barack Obama to Havana later this month, but the Communist government had no intention of changing its policies in exchange for normal relations with the United States.

In a long editorial on Wednesday in Communist Party newspaper Granma and other official media, Cuba demanded that Washington cease meddling in its internal affairs and said that Obama could do more to change U.S. policy.

Obama’s March 20-22 visit to the island comes 15 months after he and Cuban President Raul Castro agreed to end more than five decades of Cold War-era animosity and try to normalize relations.

They have restored diplomatic ties. Obama also has relaxed a series of trade sanctions and travel restrictions, leading Republican opponents – including presidential candidates Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz – and even some of the president’s fellow Democrats to question whether Washington was offering too much without any reciprocation from Havana.

But the editorial made it clear that Cuba still has a long list of grievances with the United States, starting with the comprehensive trade embargo. Obama wants to rescind the embargo but Republican leadership in Congress has blocked the move.

Cuban President Raul Castro said in December that the US would have to drop the embargo and surrender the US military base at Guantanamo Bay before normalization could be completed.

Cuba also objects to U.S. support for its political dissidents, whom some Americans consider champions of human rights but whom the Cuban government views as an unrepresentative minority funded by U.S. interests.

The United States “should abandon the pretense of fabricating an internal political opposition, paid for with money from U.S. taxpayers,” the nearly 3,000-word editorial said.

The editorial further reinforces calls made by Cuban President Raul Castro in December that the US respect his country’s national sovereignty.

In a December address to Cuba’s Parliament, Castro said the communist island nation would “never accept conditions that tear at [its] sovereignty and dignity.”

The US shouldn’t believe that normalization will lead Cuba to abandon its independence, economic or social systems, Castro added during his December address to Parliament.

 

Rare trip by a U.S. president

The editorial came during Cubans’ growing anticipation of the Obama visit, only the second by a U.S. president and the first since the 1959 revolution, led by Fidel Castro, that overthrew a pro-American government.

The editorial said Cuba was working to build a new relationship with the United States, but no one should assume it had to “renounce any of its principles or cede the slightest bit in its defense” to do so.

The two countries have also negotiated greater cooperation on law enforcement and environmental issues and agreed to resume scheduled commercial flights and postal services. Obama has removed Cuba from a list of state sponsors of terrorism.

The editorial acknowledged Obama had taken some positive steps but criticized their “limited nature and the existence of other regulations and intimidation caused by the overall blockade that has been in force for more than 50 years.”