Huddleston: Empowering Cubans

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HAVANA, Cuba (CNN) -- Former President Jimmy Carter plans to travel to Cuba Sunday, in the highest-level American visit to the communist country since Fidel Castro took power.

Vicki Huddleston, the highest-ranking U.S. diplomat in Cuba, discussed the visit Saturday with CNN Anchor Kate Snow.

CNN: President Carter comes tomorrow. I know you're going to have a meeting with him. Will you, as a representative of the Bush administration, tell him to deliver some kind of message to Fidel Castro?

HUDDLESTON: What I'll tell President Carter is yesterday the most amazing thing happened in Cuba. The Cuban people spoke, perhaps for the first time. I myself call it the first day in a peaceful transition to democracy.

Ten thousand people have put their signatures on a petition, overcome their fear, to ask this government to allow a petition, a referendum, a vote on a free Cuba, on democracy in Cuba.

CNN: A vote which essentially would ask the Cuban people if they want more rights and if they want free elections and that sort of thing.

HUDDLESTON: Specifically, it would ask for freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, release of political prisoners, private enterprise and a process to a democratic system.

CNN: The Cuban government calls it a subversive ploy organized by Washington, D.C.

HUDDLESTON: This is not the United States government. This is the Cuban people overcoming their fear, expressing their frustrations -- we just want the right to have a little space to have some freedom.

CNN: What do you think he can achieve with this visit?

HUDDLESTON: Well, let me give you the answer that I've been given by human rights activists and independent librarians throughout Cuba. I recently took a trip to the center of Cuba and to eastern Cuba.

It took seven days to do the trip. When I talked to them, the Cuban people had not heard about the trip, but information had seeped back into the country about President Carter's trip, to the human rights activists and to the dissidents.

One religious leader in Camaguey said to me, "What I want President Carter to do is ask the government to allow my church to grow crops so that we can make meals and provide those meals to the elderly people whose pensions are insufficient for them to have enough to eat."

Then I talked to a group who's supporting a blind activist, who is an independent journalist, who was beaten up when he protected a member of his group, and he's now in jail. They're hoping that President Carter is going to ask for his release.

CNN: You're putting a pretty high bar, as far as expectations go, at least -- that's what I've gathered from everyone I've talked to. The expectations are pretty high for this trip.

How do you guarantee that the very presence of Carter makes change or actually opens something?

HUDDLESTON: Well, there's no way you can do that. Obviously, the Cuban government is use this trip as much as it can to its advantage.

But the government of the United States has made that decision. He fits into the categories that allow travel to Cuba. And of course, I, as a representative of the United States government in Cuba, am going to do everything I can to facilitate that visit, to assist our former president and to make the visit as good as possible.

I know the president's stature as a human rights person, as somebody who has made democracy the hallmark of his administration. I hope -- it may not happen now, but I hope over time, he will help to lift the veil of silence that has covered the Cuban people, to get information...

CNN: You have gotten a lot of attention here in Cuba for distributing shortwave radios, all over the country when you travel. The Cuban government doesn't like it very much. They say you're interfering.

HUDDLESTON: They don't like it all. But this is technology over 100 years old. Radios are freely for sale in Cuba. The Cuban government counts on the fact that people don't have the money to buy a radio. The Cuban government has been untruthful about these radios.

It says that they're just turned to Radio Marti. This is not true. You can move the dial around and listen to Radio Havana Libre or you can listen to Radio Netherlands or you can listen to Radio Marti.

What the Cuban government doesn't like (is) the choice the people have to listen to anything this little radio can pick up. This is something we do all over the world. We distribute information to try to empower people. We would like to see the Cuban people empowered.

CNN: Last week the Cubans released -- the Cuban government released Vladimiro Roca, who was somebody who had been in prison for five years merely for distributing a political pamphlet. Some people up here, a lot of people up here, thought this was a PR effort in light of Jimmy Carter's trip down there.

But my question to you is, what do we know now about the current status of political prisoners in Cuba, how many true political prisoners there are in Castro's jails?

HUDDLESTON: Well ... first of all, let me say something about Vladimiro. What an amazing man. He walked out of prison and he said, "What the Cuban government needs to do is one word, tolerance -- tolerance for dissidents, tolerance for differences in the Cuban population." He's an amazing man.

We think they are probably about 250 to 300 political prisoners in Cuba. There are also many, many, many people in Cuban jails for economic crimes.