Bush's get-tough policy against Cuba in disarray

Fidel Castro led more than a million people on an anti-American march through the streets of Havana yesterday to mark the 48th anniversary of the revolution that brought him to power, as the White House faced growing resistance to its get-tough stance against Cuba.

The US House of Representatives voted 240-186 to lift travel restrictions on ordinary Americans wishing to visit Cuba, directly defying an order given by Mr Bush to the Treasury Department to increase its monitoring and "enforce the law to the fullest extent" by fining travellers who visit the island without government approval.

The House of Representatives vote is almost certain to be overturned in the Senate, where the Republican Party leadership has vowed to prevent its passage. A similar vote taken last year, when Bill Clinton was still President, was blocked in the upper house.

But this vote is an embarrassment for Mr Bush, because the House is controlled by his fellow Republicans. It also highlights the disarray into which US policy on Cuba has fallen over the decades in which Mr Castro has succeeded not only in holding on to power, but in marshalling ever stronger anti-American sentiment among Cuba's 11 million people.

At yesterday's rally, a triumphant Mr Castro, wearing his usual olive fatigues and tennis shoes, led the sea of demonstrators past the US diplomatic mission. His purpose, according to many observers, was to prove that despite a fainting fit during a speech last month he had plenty of life left in him.

Mr Bush has been unable to show such resolve. Partly in deference to Miami's Cuban-American community – without whom he would not now be President – he issued a strong statement last week urging a strengthening of sanctions and an increase in funding to anti-Castro groups in Cuba.

"The sanctions the United States enforces against the Castro regime are not just a policy tool, but a moral statement. It is wrong to prop up a regime that routinely stifles all the freedoms that make us human,'' he said.

By Monday, however, the White House had softened its line, agreeing to suspend for a further six months a virulently anti-Castro law that would, in theory, permit US companies to take legal action against foreigners trading in Cuba.

The shift probably had more to do with US relations with Europe (where most of the companies at risk from litigation are based) than with Cuba, but it nevertheless exposed the incoherence of American policy.

The travel restrictions are particularly absurd, because most Americans wishing to visit Cuba simply fly there via Mexico without seeking approval from the Treasury.

Molly Ivins, a columnist and fellow Texan, wrote of Mr Bush's tactics: "We are reduced to sitting around hoping [Castro will] die, which is not a shrewd foreign policy."