Cuban press Wednesday unanimously hailed former US President Jimmy Carter's Tuesday call to Washington to normalize relations with the Caribbean country.
Cuba's leading journals, Granma and Juventud Rebelde, set a positive value on Carter's speech, "US and Cuba: Toward the 21stCentury," made Tuesday at Havana University, which was attended byCuban President Fidel Castro and broadcast live by Cuban radio andtelevision.
Carter, on a landmark visit to Cuba, urged the US administration to lift its ban against Cuba and take the first steps toward normalizing relations between the two countries.
"After 42 years of differences between the two countries, the moment has come to change our relations," and to change the style of thinking and talking on both sides, Carter said in his speech, urging the US Congress to remove laws restricting travel to Cubaas soon as possible and the two nations to normalize trade.
Carter, a veteran Democrat politician, who arrived here Sunday at the invitation of Cuban leader Fidel Castro for a six-day trip,also called for an end to the economic, financial and trade blockade imposed by the White House four decades ago.
"It is time to change relations," Juventud Rebelde said in its front page, while Granma underscored in its front page that Carterhad came to the long-blockaded island country to seek an answer for a positive bilateral relationship.
Carter's current visit to Cuba marks a bright spot in an otherwise bitter feud between the two neighbors since the 1959 Cuban Revolution.
From the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 to last week's charges bythe Bush administration that Cuba is developing biological weapons,the two neighbors have bickered and feuded across the Florida Straits for the last over 40 years.
Local press Wednesday also underlined the presence of Carter and Castro on Tuesday night at a Cuban baseball league all-star match.
(Xinhua News Agency May 16, 2002)
