The invitation given Cuban President Raul Castro to a summit for the Organization of American States (OAS), due to be attended by President Barack Obama, has been blasted by a leading critic of the island dictatorship.
Castro is scheduled to appear at the Summit of the Americas on Friday and Saturday in Panama. But the organization's Inter-American Democratic charter states that members can be suspended if they do not follow democratic governing policies, according to
the Washington Free Beacon.
The charter, adopted in 2001, also says that members are expected to conduct "free and fair electoral processes."
Castro will appear at the summit even though he is the unelected leader of an authoritarian regime, according to
CNN.
But Jose Cardenas, a former National Security Council staffer on Latin America during the George W. Bush administration, told the Beacon that Castro's invitation showed an "utter disregard" for the charter.
"This isn't something that just happens," he said about the charter. "To get all the countries of the hemisphere — except Cuba of course — to agree to a standard of democracy across the whole region and uphold the duty to defend it is something that takes years of work, years of planning.
"For all of the sudden it to be absolutely null and void — it's a huge step backward for the region."
Last year the Obama administration agreed to normalize relations with Cuba, and has taken steps to ease U.S. travel and economic sanctions against the island country.
Roberta Jacobson, the State Department official in charge of the policy changes, said Obama will likely be informally meeting with Castro during the summit.
"I think on the question of the interactions, clearly President Obama knew when he made the decision to go to the summit and he knew that Cuba had been invited to the summit ... that there would be an interaction at the summit," she said.
During a Brookings Institute event, she added, "the leaders are together a lot of the time. And so there will be an interaction with Raul Castro."
Cardenas pointed out that Castro's invitation will mean that the democratic charter will be taken off the agenda at the OAS summit.
While saying that the U.S. approval of Cuba's invite was another example of Obama officials being "asleep at the switch," Cardenas added, "it's a summit that is devoid of substance, and it's all about this celebrity moment between Obama and Raul Castro."
Although the organization had banned Cuba from the group in 1962, it adopted a resolution in 2009 allowing the communist country to rejoin. But the Castro regime only took up the offer after it had reached an agreement with Obama to normalize relations with the U.S.
During an interview with
The New York Times over the weekend, Obama defended his controversial decision to renew relations with Cuba after 50 years of enmity.
"For us to test the possibility that engagement leads to a better outcome for the Cuban people, there aren't that many risks for us," Obama said.
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