MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

CNN opinion poll in US shows 71% support relations with Cuba

A new poll from CNN shows that two-thirds of US citizens surveyed think the US should lift its travel ban on Cuba, and three-quarters think the US should end its five-decade estrangement with the country.

According to the CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll conducted April 3 to 5, 64% of the 1,023 Americans surveyed by telephone thought the US government should allow citizens to travel to Cuba. And 71% of those polled said that the US should reestablish diplomatic relations with Cuba, while 27% opposed such a move.

Both questions had a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The administration of President Barak Obama has signaled that new rules on family travel and remittances to Cuba may be announced before Obama goes to the Summit of the Americas on April 17.

A group of senators and other supporters unveiled a bill March 31 to lift the 47-year-old travel ban to Cuba. “I think that we finally reached a new watermark here on this issue,” said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-North Dakota, one of the bill's sponsors.

Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Indiana, another sponsor of the bill, issued a draft report in February that said it was time to reconsider the economic sanctions. Lugar is the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“Republicans as well as Democrats favor reestablishing diplomatic relations with Cuba” CNN polling director Keating Holland said. “On the issue of lifting travel restrictions, Republicans are evenly divided, while independents and Democrats support the change.”

A delegation from the Congressional Black Caucus traveled to Cuba earlier this week to find out if Cuba was interested in resuming relations with the US, said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-California, a member of the delegation.

“We have to remember that every country in Latinamerica, 15 countries, have normal relations with Cuba,” Lee said. “We're the country which is isolated”. Lee added that Cuba has no preconditions on resuming relations.

However the trip prompted Republican congressmen to rip the Black Caucus members for ignoring Cuba's “myriad gross human rights abuses,” saying the trip to the island nation ignored the plight of political prisoners under the Castro regime.

Cuban-American members of Congress, regardless of party affiliation, have voiced outrage over the easing of relations. Florida Republican Sen. Mel Martinez, who was born in Cuba, doesn't want to see changes to the embargo.

“Having tourists on Cuban beaches is not going to achieve democratic change in Cuba,” Martinez has said.

New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, a Democrat and Cuban-American, said in a recent speech that the Cuban government is “pure and simple a brutal dictatorship. ... The average Cuban lives on an income of less than a dollar a day.”