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Obama’s Gesture Towards Cuba Only Symbolic

Assures Canadian academician

CANADA, May 8, 2009. Canadian university professor John Kirk assured at a forum in this city on Friday that the announcement of US President Barack Obama on his intentions of normalizing relations with Cuba is a merely symbolic gesture.

"Obama’s signal was symbolic, because the blockade still exists and the Torricelli and Helms-Burton laws are still in force," Kirk, an expert on Cuba issues, told Prensa Latina. The professor teaches Spanish at Dalhousie University, in Canada.

"If Obama’s government is really interested in normalizing relations with Havana, then he will have to respect Cuba’s self-determination and sovereignty," said the academic.

Kirk, who participated in a forum on the Cuban Revolution held in this Canadian city on the banks on Lake Ontario, highlighted that the mere fact that a conference mostly attended by US and Cuban academics can’t be held in the United States exemplifies that the anti-Cuban policy of the White House is still in force.

This International Conference was titled "The Significance of the Cuban Revolution 1959-2009: Understanding the Past and Assessing the Future." It began on May 7 in Kingston, with the participation of over 200 scholars from 14 nations, and concluded on May 9.(Cubaminrex- Granma)

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