Dean alters Cuba stand

Speaking to reporters during a four-day national campaign swing, Dean said he supports rolling back the embargo in order to encourage human-rights advancements -- but citing Fidel Castro's recent crackdowns on dissidents, says that in recent months he has become convinced that ``we can't do it right now.''

Dean called Cuba a ''political question,'' and said that recent developments on the island would prevent him from his goal of ``constructive engagement of Cuba.''

''If you would have asked me six months ago, I would have said we should begin to ease the embargo in return for human-rights concessions,'' he said, responding to a question from a Herald reporter at a dinner Sunday night in Seattle. ``But you can't do it now because Castro has just locked up a huge number of human-rights activists and put them in prison and [held] show trials. You can't reward that kind of behavior if what you want to do is link human-rights behavior with foreign trade.''

This follows from his assertion of a moral-guided foreign policy. I don't think thhat human rights are as realistic a leverage when applied to China, but with Cuba it certainly is reasonable to make them a condition. Dean is demonstrating his adaptibility, not an ideological position on Cuba (whch is what almost everyone else does, in an attempt to maximize political gain with the Cuban exile bloc).