Havana, May 21 (Prensa Latina) Three years after its announcement and despite an aggressive White House strategy oriented to its implementation, all the so-called Bush Plan for Cuba has collected is a series of failures

  In May 2004 President George W. Bush decided "to speed the day when Cuba will be a free country," in his own words, and approved new measures aimed at ousting the Cuban government and applying an alleged transition plan.

   This plan included tightening the US blockade imposed on the Island for over 45 years, giving additional millions of dollars to aggressive anti-Cuban groups based in Florida and seeking formulas to give more money to those who want to destabilize Cuba from within.

   In fact, it was a broadening of the scope of actions started in 2003 with the establishment of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, led by then Secretary of State Colin Powell.

   This sort of offensive was resisted by Havana, despite obvious damage caused to the Island's economy and society by an unprecedented siege and the US official collusion with the most notorious terrorists.

   Three years after the US president proclaimed his plan, the Island's economy reached a 12.5-percent growth and, besides covering local needs with social services, it also aids other countries in the fields of health and education.

   One of the aspects that has been more criticized in the US effort is its greater interference and disrespect for self-determination of Cuba, illustrated by the appointment of a "governor" for Cuba, once the revolutionary government was finished.

   Cubans also make fun of US claims for a so-called transition, vowing to improve education in a country that has already reached the highest levels in the field, or vowing to cut the free and ample social assistance of the population.

   The Bush Plan also envisaged the impossible mission of securing the devolution of businesses and other properties that were nationalized after the triumph of the Revolution.

   The failure of this sort of project, which by all means ignores Cuba's current reality, is another of the long-standing setbacks of the US Cuban policy.

(Prensa Latina) 22-05-2007