But even with the demise of the Libyan dictator, plus Osama bin Laden, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic, there are still autocrats around the world hostile to the U.S., notably in Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea and Iran.

America’s most determined foes have been bucking more than just the world’s sole surviving superpower, which spends as much on its military as all other countries combined. All faced social and technological trends that made their work more difficult by opening more borders to trade and travel, promoting ethnic and religious tolerance and wiring the world for high-speed Internet.

But as long as the U.S. maintains its leadership role in world affairs, it will find itself a tempting target. Among the despots and autocratic regimes hostile to the U.S. are:

-Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who survived CIA assassination plots, the Bay of Pigs invasion and the U.S. economic embargo to excoriate and antagonize the United States for more than half a century. Castro, 85, formally resigned as president in February 2008 due to illness but handed the reins to his brother, Raul, and the revolutionary regime survives. Cuban-U.S. trade is minimal and there are no diplomatic relations between the two countries. The U.S. accuses the Cuban government of trampling on human rights and silencing dissent, while Havana portrays itself as a victim of U.S. bullying.

-Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a left-wing activist and former military officer who came to power in 1999 and instituted radical changes in economic and social policy, including expanding state control of the oil industry. Chavez has accused Washington of plotting to invade Venezuela, called for containment of the U.S., aligned himself with Cuba and signed major arms deals with Russia to build Venezuela into a regional power. The U.S. likes to portray Venezuela as more of an irritant than an adversary, but that could change if Chavez adopts more aggressive policies.

- Kim Jong Il of North Korea, a Stanlinist-style nation with a 1 million-strong army that has been a thorn in the side of the U.S. since the Korean War. In recent years the U.S. has sought to persuade Kim to give up his small nuclear weapons program, offering economic aid and diplomatic favors as bargaining chips. But the U.S. accuses Kim of repeatedly reneging on promises to disarm while selling weapons expertise abroad. The U.S. and other nations accused Pyongyang last year of torpedoing a South Korean navy ship and shelling a South Korean island. With the North Korean leader believed to be gravely ill, the key to Washington’s future relations with Pyongyang may be Kim’s son and heir apparent, Kim Jong Un.

-Iran clerical leadership. The theocratic regime in Tehran has demonstrated little tolerance for dissent and a deep and abiding hostility to Washington since the overthrow of the U.S.-backed regime of the shah of Iran in 1979. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s broadsides against the U.S. and Israel are a regular feature of U.N. General Assembly meetings, but his is just one voice among many in the Iranian government, which Western analysts say consists of a jigsaw puzzle of anti-Western factions. The present conflict with Washington grows out of concerns about Iran’s support for terror groups in the Middle East and attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, but mainly focuses on Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. The U.S. says Iran is laying the groundwork for a nuclear weapons program that could threaten the Middle East, U.S. and Europe. Iran says it is interested only in peaceful nuclear technology.

Not all dictators are regarded as enemies of the U.S.; during the Cold War and beyond, many have been treated as stalwart allies. Today, a number of autocrats endure criticism from the U.S. but are thought to represent little threat to Washington’s strategic interests, including President Aleksander Lukashenko of Belarus, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Omar al-Bashir of Sudan and Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan.

From the U.S. perspective, the survival of openly hostile despotic regimes may be less important than the rise of rival economic and political powerhouses like China, India, Brazil and Russia, a trend that some experts say could one day create a world where the United States becomes one major power among many competing for influence and markets.

The decline and fall of Gadhafi, Saddam and others doesn’t mean the age of hostile dictatorships is ending. Just as enemies can become allies, allies can become adversaries.

The U.S. considered Saddam a check on the power of the clerical regime in Iran until his invasion of Kuwait led to a deadly U.S. war in 1991. After the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Saddam became the ace of spades in the U.S. military’s deck of cards representing its most-wanted list. He ultimately was cornered by U.S. forces in a hole near his hometown of Tikrit and executed by the new Iraqi government in 2006.

Today the U.S. faces the challenge of helping prevent newly liberated countries from slipping back into authoritarianism. While Taliban leader Mullah Omar was driven from power in Afghanistan in 2001, his movement made an impressive comeback and could once again become a major force in Afghanistan politics as the U.S. withdraws.

Gadhafi’s death Thursday is just the beginning of a critical new phase in Libya’s history, said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The leaders of the Libyan rebellion inherit a divided population, a ruined economy and a barely functioning state – all crippled by decades of Gadhafi’s erratic rule.

“He left Libya with a unique set of problems,” Cordesman said. “You’d have to go back to Nero or Caligula to find someone who was able to impose their own personal eccentricities on a state to the degree that Gadhafi did.”

The terrorist mastermind is Luis Posada Carrilles, a Cuban born former aide to the dictator Batista who Castro overthrew. Posada would leave Cuba after the Cuban revolution and be a major planner in the failed Bay Of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

Posada would be trained by the CIA in America in explosives in sabotage in the USA and served as the CIA’s principal agent for Cuba.

While he was serving as an agent for the CIA, the agency began to suspect he was tied to Latin American gangsters and was involved in cocaine trafficking. Posada would embark on a plan to overthrow the leftist government in Guatemala through terrorist bombings.

In 1976, a Cuban plane flying from Barbados to Jamaica exploded mid air as a result of bombs placed on the plane. 73 people were killed including the whole Cuban fencing team, women and children. The bombs were traced to two employees of Posada’s in Venezuela.

Both of Posada’s employees confessed to the bombing and implicated Posada as the mastermind. Posada was on trial in Venezuela for the crime when he escaped from prison.

Records show that the CIA was fully aware of Posada’s plot to blow up the airplane, but did nothing to stop it or alert Cuban authorities.

Rather than disowning Posada after the plane bomging, the CIA continued to used him as an asset in El Salvador where he became a principal agent in the Iran Contra scandal, which involved trading weapons to Iran to support the Contra rebels in El Salvador who were fighting against the communist government.

After the scandal, Posada moved to Honduras, where the FBI said he was responsible for 41 bombings across the country.

In 1997, Posada was implicated in a series of bombing of Cuban tourist locations, that wounded eleven people, and killed a Canadian citizen. Posada would tell the New York Times that he planned the attack.

In 2000, Posada was caught with 200 pounds of explosives and arrested for plotting an assassination attempt on Fidel Castro. He was convicted but later pardoned by the Panamanian President in 2004, allegedly at the request of the U.S.A.

Posada would eventually return to the U.S.A. where he would eventually be charged with perjury, obstruction of justice and immigration fraud for entering the country under false pretenses. The jury acquitted Posada and the U.S. refused to extradite him to any of the countries he is wanted for terrorism.

Today, Posada is a free man living in Miami, despite the fact that he is wanted for mass murder in Venezuela and Cuba. Posada employed the same tactics as Bin Laden and is also responsible for the deaths of countless civilians. If the U.S. can invade Pakistan to kill an arch terrorist, what can stop Cuba or Venezuela from using special forces to invade Miami and kill Posada.

The U.S.A. has claimed that they don’t want to extradite Posada to Cuba or Venezuela for fear that he may be tortured, despite the fact the the U.S.A. has tortured their own terrorist suspects in Cuba themselves.

If the killing of Bin Laden was “justice,” the U.S.A. must allow Posada to be brought to justice. If not the war on terror will be marred by hypocrisy. Anybody who kills innocent people for a political cause is a terrorist, even if they worked with the U.S.A.

The U.S. can not longer harbor Posada if they want to have any sort of moral authority in the world. Like Bin Laden, Posada was trained by the CIA, and like Bin Laden Posada has been implicated in plots against the U.S.A. The CIA believed that Posada was involved in assassination plot against Henry Kissinger.

Now that Bin Laden is dead, it is time to bring the “Bin Laden of the western hemisphere” to justice. We cannot condemn terrorism against us while condoning terrorism against country;s who’s policies we disagree with.

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Many of the delegates could be seen crying as he was helped to his place on stage Tuesday by a young aide, then stood at attention next to his brother during the playing of Cuba’s national anthem.

The revolutionary icon looked unsteady on his feet as he clutched the aide’s arm, and at times slumped in his chair. He wore a blue track suit top over a checked shirt.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Fifty years after Malcolm X met with Fidel Castro in New York in the midst of the Cold War the Cuban people still rely on the support of African-Americans, Cuba’s foreign minister said.

Bruno Rodriguez spoke Sunday at an event commemorating the black civil rights leader’s September 1960 encounter with Castro in Harlem, New York’s most celebrated black neighborhood.

Rodriguez said the first communist Cuban delegation to the United Nations received support from Malcolm X and other black leaders and forged a lasting bond between “Cuban revolutionaries and the African-American progressive people.”

Rodriguez said that while the Cold War is long over, the threat of nuclear war still looms if Iran is attacked over its nuclear program. The U.S. accuses Iran of hiding plans to build a nuclear bomb; Iran denies that and says it’s working only toward building nuclear power plants.

“Today the same firm voice of our historical leader is in front of an international call for peace, and cautioning about the risk that a military attack against Iran would have for the world, putting it on the brink of a nuclear war,” Rodriguez said to a cheering crowd.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told The Associated Press on Sunday that international nuclear regulators had never found proof that Iran is pursuing an atomic bomb.

A panel of Cuban supporters asked for help freeing five Cubans imprisoned for espionage in the United States. They also remembered the legacy of the Rev. Lucius Walker, who directed a program to send Americans to study medicine in Cuba.

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From TheRoot.com:

In 1998, when President Bill Clinton was allowing Cuban artists to travel relatively easily in and out of the United States, I invited a well-known Cuban visual artist to visit my graduate class at Columbia College in Chicago. I wanted her to show the students her work and talk a little about what it was like to create art — such a personal endeavor — in a society that focused on the collective rather than the individual.

The visit to Columbia, an urban school with a strong arts focus, went well until the question-and-answer session. An African-American student, eyes misty with hope, asked, “Is it true that there’s no racism in Cuba?” My friend, a red-haired and white-skinned Cuban, nodded enthusiastically. “No, there’s no racism,” she affirmed, and there was a collective sigh in the class over the very notion that such a utopia could really exist.

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Rep. Bobby Rush says he was a little unsure of himself when he first arrived at Fidel Castro’s house in Cuba. The retired Communist dictator enthusiastically extended his hand and said, “Bobby, welcome to my home!” Rush was stunned.

“It was kinda awkward,” the Illinois Democrat told the Huffington Post. “I couldn’t say ‘Mr. President’” — Castro installed his brother Raúl as president of Cuba in 2006 — “so I called him Mr. Fidel.”

Rush and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus made waves with their visit to Cuba during the April recess, during which they met with both Castros. Rush said that Raúl Castro told him the “Cuban military and American military have been in discussions and having monthly meetings for a number of years now” (something Raúl also told actor Sean Penn). And the ailing Fidel Castro was very eager to talk Christianity, comparing the spread of Christianity to the Communist revolution.

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Fidel Castro says the Obama administration did not go far enough in softening sanctions, and criticized it for leaving in place the embargo that bars most trade and travel between the two countries.

The White House said Monday that Americans will now be able to make unlimited transfers of money and visits to relatives in Cuba. Under Bush administration rules, Cuban-Americans were eligible to travel here only every three years and send up to $300 to relatives every three months.

Monday’s action eliminated those limits in the hope that less dependence on their government will lead Cubans to demand progress on political freedoms.

Castro responded in an online column Monday night. The ailing former president wrote that the U.S. had announced the repeal of “several hateful restrictions,” but had stopped short of real change.

“Of the blockade, which is the cruelest of measures, not a word was uttered,” he wrote.

Castro noted that several U.S. senators favor lifting the trade embargo and urged Obama to seize the opportunity.

“The conditions are in place for Obama to use his talent in a constructive policy that ends something that has failed for nearly half a century,” he wrote.

While analysts say the U.S. policy change could usher in a new era of openness between the two countries, few here think it will mean the end of the trade embargo, which has choked off nearly all U.S. trade with the island for 47 years and counting.

“I’m not hoping for much more from Obama,” said 43-year-old office worker Layna Rodriguez. “I don’t know that he can do much more since to him, the important thing is what the Americans in his country do.”

But many Cubans are happy that relatives in America will now be able to come whenever they want, stay as long as they want and send as much cash home as they can. About 1.5 million Americans have relatives in Cuba, which turned to communist rule after Fidel Castro seized control in 1959.

For Olguita Sierra, the shift in U.S. policy allowing Cuban-Americans to make unlimited trips and money transfers to the island came a month too late.

The 72-year-old’s son Sergio lives in Miami and had not been eligible for a trip to Cuba until next year. His request for an emergency visa was pending in March when his father passed away.

“What hurts me most is that my husband died just a little while ago without seeing him,” Sierra stammered, tears welling in her eyes. “If only Obama had made this decision sooner.”

Jose Pilar Ramos, a 20-something looking for work in the Old Havana tourist district, said his cousin in Miami does not have enough money to visit Cuba — regardless of what U.S. law now allows.

“Obama can do what he wants, but the problem is here. People don’t want to work for $4 a week, even if they get more money from family members over there,” he said, nodding toward the waters of the Florida Straits, which lap at the Havana coastline.

Nearly all Cubans work for the government, earning an average of 414 pesos — just $19.70 — a month. Ramos said he lost his state job after trying to flee Cuba three times by small boat, most recently in February when he was picked up on the high seas by the U.S. Coast Guard and sent home.

As he spoke, a police officer approached, demanded his identification card and detained him for venturing outside of his neighborhood in East Havana. Police keep close watch on tourist areas, ensuring that foreigners and Cubans don’t mix more than necessary. Nobody had bothered Ramos until he began speaking to a foreign journalist.

Other steps taken Monday by the White House include expanding items allowed in gift parcels sent to Cuba. The administration also will begin issuing licenses for companies to provide cellular and television services to Cubans, and letting family members pay for relatives on the island to get those services.

But for many, the moves are only a beginning. Alberto Sal, a 68-year-old retiree, said he had high hopes when Obama was elected but is still waiting for significant action.

For instance, the president said nothing Monday about bipartisan measures in both houses of Congress that would effectively allow all Americans to travel to Cuba.

“He should do more and lift travel restrictions for all Americans,” Sal said. “Until he does that, I don’t think he’s doing much.”

A “very healthy, very energetic” Fidel Castro asked visiting Congressional Black Caucus members what Cuba could do to help President Barack Obama improve bilateral relations during his first meeting with U.S. officials since falling ill in 2006.

Caucus leader Rep. Barbara Lee, a Democrat from California, said the ailing former Cuban president talked for nearly two hours with her and two other delegation members on Tuesday in a meeting seen as signaling Cuba’s willingness to discuss better relations with the United States.

“We believe it is time to open dialogue and discussion with Cuba,” Lee told a news conference in Washington upon the caucus members’ return. “Cubans do want dialogue. They do want talks. They do want normal relations.”

Lee said the group would present its findings to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a fellow Democrat from California, and White House and State Department officials.

California Democratic Rep. Laura Richardson, who also met Fidel with Illinois Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush, said Castro “looked directly into our eyes” and asked how Cuba could help Obama in his efforts to change the course of U.S. foreign policy.

Richardson said she had the impression that 82-year-old Fidel wants to see changes in U.S.-Cuba relations in his lifetime.

Lee said she found Castro “very healthy, very energetic, very clear thinking.”

The surprise encounter came a day after the full delegation of six representatives spent more than four hours talking privately with Cuban President Raul Castro, his first encounter with U.S. officials since formally replacing his brother as head of state nearly 14 months ago.

And it comes as Washington discusses whether to warm up long-chilly relations with Cuba. Obama has ordered an assessment of U.S. policy toward the communist nation and some members of Congress are pushing to lift a ban on Americans visiting the island.

Fidel Castro has not been seen in public since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006 and it was his first meeting in several years with American officials. Although he gave up his presidential duties after becoming ill, he remains an influential force in Cuba.

In a column posted on a government Web site late Tuesday night, Castro wrote about his meeting with the three U.S. representatives, saying Cuban leaders “weren’t aggressors, nor did we threaten the United States.”

“Cuba did not have any alternative but to take the initiative,” he said in explaining why he sought the lawmakers’ advice on what his country could do to help Obama improve bilateral relations.

He did not spell out exactly what they recommended, but applauded “the interest and depth with which they expounded on their points of view and the quality of their simple and profound words.”

“The three reflected transparency, pride in their work, their organization and the fight for their country,” Castro wrote. “It’s evident that they know Obama and have confidence and security in, and sympathy for him.”

Among the last U.S. officials to see him face-to-face were state governors visiting the island separately on farm trade missions in 2005: Dave Heineman of Nebraska and Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana.

Lee’s group was in Cuba five days on a trip meant to encourage dialogue between the United States and Cuba.

Jeffrey Davidow, the White House adviser for this month’s Summit of the Americas, which Obama will attend, says the U.S. president has no plans to lift the 47-year-old trade embargo against Cuba. But he says Obama will soon ease travel and financial restrictions affecting the island as his administration reviews its Cuban policy.

Lee’s delegation is sympathetic to Cuba, with most of its members openly praising the country’s communist government while decrying U.S. policy.

Before the meeting with Fidel Castro was revealed, Lee said her group’s talks with Raul Castro left lawmakers “convinced that President Castro sees normalization of relations and an end to the embargo as a benefit to both countries.”

Bills in both houses of the U.S. Congress would effectively bar any president from prohibiting Americans from traveling to Cuba except in extreme cases such as war.

Lee predicted the measures will be approved, but said that will not spell the end of the embargo.

“This would be a wonderful step, allowing American citizens the right to travel to Cuba, but much would follow after that,” she said in an interview.

The lawmakers’ meeting with Raul Castro touched on few specific issues, especially thorny ones like Cuba’s checkered human rights record.

“We did not come to negotiate, we came to associate and cultivate,” said Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, another delegation member.

Asked about the lawmakers’ trip, U.S. State Department spokesman Robert Wood said members of Congress are free to go where they want and to discuss issues with world leaders.

“And I’m sure that the members of that delegation will be raising some of the concerns that the U.S. government has with Cuba in terms of allowing Cubans to have the same rights and freedoms as (citizens of) other countries in the hemisphere,” Wood said.

Fidel Castro met Tuesday with three members of the Congressional Black Caucus, the former Cuban president’s first meeting with American officials since falling ill in July 2006.

Greg Adams, a spokesman at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, said Rep. Barbara Lee, a California Democrat, and two other lawmakers met with the ailing, 82-year-old Castro. He did not have further details, nor could he provide the names of the other Americans who attended the meeting.

The meeting appears to underscore the Cuban government’s desire for improved relations with the United States under new President Barack Obama.

Adams said he expected the Cuban government to release more information during the nightly newscast on state television.

The bearded former president who has clashed with every U.S. president since Dwight D. Eisenhower has not been seen in public since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006. He formally ceded power to his brother Raul, five years his junior, last February.

Lee led a delegation of six Democratic representatives who left Havana Tuesday after a five-day trip designed to encourage dialogue between the United States and Cuba.

The group was traveling and not immediately available to provide details. Reached in Washington, J. Jioni Palmer, a spokesman for the Congressional Black Caucus, said he had not heard of any meeting with the elder Castro.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus will travel to Cuba on Friday in another sign of federal lawmakers’ interest in easing a long-standing trade embargo and travel restrictions.

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) said the trip is designed to demonstrate to Cubans that the American people are interested in building a new relationship with them.

“Diplomacy and a new way of looking at our foreign policy just makes sense,” said Lee, chairwoman of the caucus.

Visits to Cuba by members of Congress are hardly new, but some lawmakers believe the election of President Barack Obama presents a new opportunity to open up trade and tourism. Business and farm groups are backing the lawmakers’ efforts.

On Tuesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the Senate announced their support for legislation that would prevent the president from stopping travel to Cuba except in cases of war, imminent danger to public health or threats to the physical safety of U.S. travelers. An identical bill in the House has 120 co-sponsors.

Lee said she did not believe that improved economic relations with Cuba would strengthen the communist government at the expense of the Cuban people.

“It’s a country that we’ve had an embargo against for what, 40 years, but it hasn’t worked,” Lee said. “American citizens should have a right to travel to determine their own points of view.”

Lee said her top priority when addressing U.S.-Cuba relations would be on easing travel restrictions.

Fidel Castro wrote on a state run Cuban website  “I expressed that personally I had not the least doubt of the honesty with which Obama, the 11th president since 1 January, 1959, expressed his ideas, but in spite of his noble intentions there remained many questions to answer.” Fidel’s brother, Raul had previously said that he thought Obama seemed like a good man and wished him good luck.

HAVANA – Fifty years after triumphant armed rebels descended from the eastern mountains, communist Cuba celebrated the revolution’s anniversary Thursday with toned-down festivities after a trio of devastating hurricanes and under the enduring public absence of an ailing Fidel Castro.

The austere celebrations, including dances and concerts across the island, belied the start of a year infused with possibilities for increased cash and visitors, and other changes that might ease Cubans’ daily hardships. Many here hope for improved relations with the United States when President-elect Barack Obama takes office Jan. 20 following declarations he would talk directly with Raul Castro and lift severe restrictions on family travel and remittances to the island.

“I hope he gets rid of the blockade,” 42-year-old Ana Luisa Mas said as she bought a pork leg for her family’s New Year’s Eve celebration, referring to decades-old U.S. trade sanctions.

“We are very hopeful that with Obama our relatives will be able to visit us more, and send us more money,” she said, maneuvering through hundreds of shoppers packed inside the enclosed Cuatro Caminos farmers market, rushing to buy black beans and rice, salad greens and other New Year’s Eve dinner standbys.

“We also hope that Fidel will stay with us a little bit longer,” Mas added.

President Raul Castro, who succeeded his older brother in February, planned to speak Thursday night from the same balcony where Fidel declared victory over dictator Fulgencio Batista’s government on Jan. 1, 1959.

No foreign leaders were expected at the evening speech on a small, leafy plaza, with little fanfare beyond invitations to 3,000 Communist Party faithful. Outside the seaside U.S. Interests Section in Havana, the popular group Los Van Van were performing.

Fidel Castro’s health is a state secret and he remains out of sight after undergoing major intestinal surgery almost 2 1/2 years ago. But the 82-year-old continues to write occasional essays that suggest he still has some say in government affairs.

Shortly before midnight Wednesday, a brief statement by Castro was read on state television, congratulating “our heroic people” on the eve of the anniversary.

The 77-year-old Raul Castro appears to be in firm control of the government, but has yet to introduce any major reforms and few expect transcendent change while his brother is alive.

Officials initially planned a more grandiose anniversary celebration but scaled back after three hurricanes this year caused $10 billion in damages and wiped out nearly a third of Cuba’s crops. Raul Castro last week called for more cost-cutting measures as the island posted an annual economic growth of 4.3 percent for the year, barely half the original government forecast.

Over a half-century, the triumphant rebels erased illiteracy, crafted a universal health care system, and built thousands of new schools. But after Fidel Castro embraced communism in 1961, labor unions lost the right to strike, the Catholic Church was harassed, and opponents of the new government were jailed.

The Havana-based non-governmental Cuban Commission for Human Rights and Reconciliation last counted 219 political prisoners on the island, down from as many as 15,000 in 1964.

Cuba’s revolution was nevertheless long admired throughout the Third World as Castro stood up defiantly to the “Yankee imperialists,” and infant mortality rates began rivaling those of developing countries.

Cuban writer Roberto Fernandez Retamar said the revolutionary movement remains relevant as several regional governments embrace milder versions of the socialist principles long promoted by the island’s government. Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador are especially strong leftist allies.

“I think that the hopeful moment we have been seeing in Latin America in recent years has something to do with the Cuban revolution’s existence,” said Retamar.

Across the decades, Cuba’s communist system has hung on, even after the Iron Curtain collapsed and communist China and Vietnam embraced free markets while still maintaining their political systems.

When President George W. Bush leaves office later this month, the revolution will have outlasted 10 American presidents who maintained strict U.S. sanctions aimed at overthrowing the Cuban leadership.

Outgoing Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, a Cuban-American who used his Bush administration post to promote hard line policies against the Castro government, this week argued against any easing of sanctions.

“To suggest unconditional dialogue with the Castro brothers would only signal that the conditions in Cuba are acceptable,” Gutierrez wrote in The Washington Times. “If the United States does not continue to stand for the ideals of freedom and human rights and against the many guises of tyranny and oppression, who will?”

But many others think it is time for a major change in U.S. policies toward the island, and that rapprochement could help force an opening on the island.

“Confrontation plays up Havana’s strong suit,” Marifeli Perez-Stable of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank, wrote in December. “Engagement may show how weak (Cuba’s) hand really is. Which one is the real hard line?”

Fidel Castro, the former President of Cuba, has offered to talk to Barack Obama, in Havana’s latest overture to the US President elect.

“With Obama, talks could happen anywhere he wants,” the former head of the Communist regime wrote in the latest of a series of columns he has published in state-run media since falling ill in 2006.

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Fidel Castro has come out of hiding to make some statements criticizing McCain and praising Barack Obama.

Castro made a statement on the website Cubadebate on Saturday, “Profound racism exists in the United States,”  as he weighed in on the US presidential race ahead of the November 4 election.

“Millions of whites cannot reconcile in their minds with the idea that a black man with his wife and children would move into the White House, which is called just like that — White,”

Castro said it was a “pure miracle” that  the Barack Obama, who became the first black politician to win the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, had not been assassinated thus far.

Castro said that Obama “has the habit of looking at his opponent with serenity and laughing at his rhetorical attacks.”

Castro criticized John McCain and Sarah Palin bringing up McCain’s poor grades and saying Palin “knew nothing at all about anything.”