The Environmental Protection Agency has concluded that greenhouse gases are a danger to public health and welfare. The moves reverses a finding put forward by the Bush White House that blocked using the Clean Air Act to address global warming.
Obama, Clinton, Castro, ready to talk
by Mark Silva
As President Barack Obama landed at Port-of-Spain this afternoon for a summit including all the hemisphere's leaders but Cuba's, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton already had welcomed Cuban President Raul Castro's call for new talks with the United States.
"We welcome his comments, the overture they represent,'' Clinton said of Castro, "and we are taking a very serious look at how we intend to respond."
Castro says Cuba is ready to put "everything on the table''this, after Obama this week relaxed restrictions on Cuban-Americans traveling to Cuba and sending money to relatives there, suggesting that there could be a relaxing of relations with the neighboring island nation if Cuba shows some progress on recognition of human rights.
The head of the Organization of American States said today that he will ask its members to readmit Cuba 47 years after it ousted the Communist nation. Castro, for his part, says "a serpent will be born from an eagle's egg'' before that happens.
With the leaders of 34 nations converging on Trinidad for the Summit of the Americas today -- an OAS-sponsored gathering that includes every nation in the region but communist Cuba -- speculation about a possible thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations are riding higher than they have since the largely frozen since the Cold War.
OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza announced his intention to back Cuba's readmission "We're going step by step," Insulza said, explaining that he will ask the OAS general assembly in May to annul the 1962 resolution that suspended Cuba.
(President Obama's toughest challenges in the hemisphere: Cuba's President Raul Castro, left, speaks with Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez during the Bolivarian Alternative trade pact, ALBA, summit in Cumana, Venezuela. Photo by Fernando Vergara / )
Washington provides more than 70 percent of the OAS budget, which affords it certain privileges. For 47 years, the Washington-based organization has officially considered Cuba's Communist system to be incompatible with its principles.
Yet most nations in the hemisphere have long since restored diplomatic ties, and there is a growing clamor for an end to efforts to isolate Cuba, not just from Raul and Fidel Castro's close friends, but also from conservative U.S. allies like Mexico.
Still Raul Castro spoke Thursday at a meeting of leftist leaders in Venezuela who vowed to represent Cuba's interests in Trinidad. The OAS, he said, "should disappear.''
"The North Sea will unite with the South Seas, a serpent will be born from an eagle's egg before Cuba joins the OAS," Castro said.
Raul Castro has previously said that he would be willing to discuss all issues with Obama. "We could be wrong, we admit it. We're human beings," Castro said. "We're willing to sit down to talk as it should be done, whenever."
Castro's conditions for talks are that Washington must treat them as a conversation between equals and respect "the Cuban people's right to self-determination."
The Communist Party newspaper Granma today did not carry Castro's comments about the U.S., focusing instead on his talks on regional matters with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and other Latin American leaders. Granma's coverage of Obama's visit to Mexico ignored his statements about Cuba, and dealt instead with Mexican President Felipe Calderon's call on Obama to drop the U.S. trade embargo.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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