GENERAL Bantz Craddock, outgoing head of the U.S. Southern Command, urged the U.S. government to review its failed policy on Cuba, and criticized the ban on contact between military officers of the two nations.

Craddock said the time had come for a "stem-to-stern" review on U.S. regulations, including the ban on meetings between the two countries’ militaries outside of traditional talks along the fence surrounding the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo.

"One of the things that we as a government probably don't do well is to review our policies and our laws routinely, based upon the conditions in the world changing (...) My judgment is we need to re-look laws, policies more often to ensure that they still make sense, given the changing conditions in the world," he said, adding, "I don't want to make a judgment on whether or not to change [the Cuba policy], but I think it needs to be re-looked."

Other former chiefs of the Southern Command have criticized the lack of bilateral meetings between the two nations’ armed forces. One of them, General Charles Wilhelm, said in September 2002 that Cuba was a "47,000-square-mile blind spot in [our] rearview mirror."

The statements by General Craddock come at a time when the Bush administration is planning to strengthen sanctions on Cuba with the publication of a new report by the so-called Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, sponsored by the State Department but backed by other government agencies.

The intentions of that commission and the recent compendium for preparing and accelerating "transition" in Cuba were strongly condemned by a number of U.S. social organizations, including the Center for International Policy, the Latin American Working Group, the Washington Office on Latin America, and the National Council of the Churches of Christ.

Those organizations emphasized the failure of policy on Cuba, and its attempt to implement a "new democracy" after the death of Cuban President Fidel Castro, and they predicted a true fiasco for any further attempts to strengthen that policy.