US President George Bush ruled out any easing of his country's trade embargo on Cuba. Photo by Kameliya Atanasova (Sofia Photo Agency)
US President George Bush ruled out any easing of his country's trade embargo on Cuba, CNN reported Thursday.
"As long as the regime maintains its monopoly over the political and economic life of the Cuban people, the United States will keep the embargo in place," Bush said.
Easing the embargo would be "giving oxygen to a criminal regime," he added.
Bush however proposed loosening some restrictions on contacts with the Caribbean country, if more freedoms were allowed.
The US head of state denounced the communist-ruled island as a "tropical gulag," appearing with relatives of jailed Cuban dissidents and prominent Cuban-Americans at the State Department.
He said Cuba is on the cusp of "fundamental change," with its 81-year-old leader Fidel Castro sidelined for more than a year after undergoing an abdominal surgery.
The end of communism in Cuba would reveal "horrors still unknown to the rest of the world," Bush said, calling the current government "a failed regime" and in its "dying gasps."
Bush called on US allies to offer public support for dissidents by allowing them to meet and access outside media sources at their embassies.
"The dissidents of today will be the nation's leaders tomorrow," he said. "When freedom finally comes, they will surely remember who stood with them."
The United States would also let Cuban students take part in Latin American scholarship programs "if the Cuban rulers will allow them to freely participate," Bush said.