United States President Barack Obama says that his country’s longstanding trade embargo against the Caribbean’s only communist state, Cuba, ’hasn’t worked the way we want it to’.

Nonetheless, Obama stood firm on his administration’s position that any lifting of the embargo would not occur until Cuba embraces more western democratic principles, such as free elections and the release of political prisoners.

Obama did so during a news conference at the Hilton Trinidad hotel in St Ann’s yesterday, after he attended a Fifth Summit of the Americas retreat for all the 34 Heads of State hosted by Prime Minister Patrick Manning at the nearby Diplomatic Centre in St Ann’s.

Asked about his support for an end to the trade embargo against Cuba while he was contesting a seat in the US Senate in 2004, Obama said, ’Is it while - I was running for Senate. There you go. Look, what I said and what I think my entire administration has acknowledged is, is that the policy that we’ve had in place for 50 years hasn’t worked the way we want it to. The Cuban people are not free. And that’s our lodestone, our North Star, when it comes to our policy in Cuba.’

Obama had experienced a strong tide of support for the lifting of the trade sanctions against Cuba from some of its strongest allies, including Venezuela President Hugo Chavez and Bolivia President Evo Morales. Manning and other Caribbean Community (Caricom) leaders have also expressed their support for Cuba. However, Obama made it clear that he will not go further than the lifting of travel restrictions on US citizens with relatives in Cuba and other measures he announced last week until there is ’real change’ in the communist island.

’What was remarkable about the summit was that every leader who was participating was democratically elected. We might not be happy with the results of some elections; we might be happier with others; we might disagree with some of the leaders, but they all were conferred the legitimacy of a country speaking through democratic channels. And that is not yet there in Cuba,’ Obama said.

He said that as a starting point, it was important ’for us not to think that completely ignoring Cuba is somehow going to change policy’, as he noted overtures from the island’s President, Raul Castro, of a desire to have the Cuban government discuss with the US ’not just issues of lifting the embargo, but issues of human rights and political prisoners’.

Obama said while he ’does not agree with everything’ said by other Western-hemispheric leaders who attended the summit, or sees ’eye to eye’ with them on everything, ’what we showed here is that we can make progress when we’re willing to break free from some of the stale debates and old ideologies that have dominated and distorted the debate in this hemisphere for far too long’.

’We showed that while we have our differences, we can - and must - work together in areas where we have mutual interests, and where we disagree we can disagree respectfully,’ Obama said.

-JB