Costa Rica to tell Cuba it cannot keep aiding stalled migrants

Costa Rica to tell Cuba it cannot keep aiding stalled migrants
By Marc Frank and Daniel Trotta

HAVANA (Reuters) - Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solis will tell
Cuban President Raul Castro his Central American country is unable to
continue caring for thousands of Cuban migrants indefinitely, seeking to
force a resolution to the month-long crisis.

Solis arrived in Cuba on Sunday for the first official visit by a Costa
Rican president in 72 years with nearly 5,000 Cuban migrants stranded on
his country's northern border with Nicaragua as they seek to reach the
United States.

Solis is due to meet Castro on Tuesday.

"We cannot maintain this task indefinitely," Solis said of the effort by
national and local officials, churches and private companies to support
the Cubans, most of them living in shelters.

"With all brotherly frankness, I will pose this in meetings to be held
with the presidents of the SICA (Central American Integration System)
and in Havana with President Raul Castro," Solis said in an address
broadcast in Costa Rica.

Solis' visit to Cuba was planned well before the crisis. Costa Rica
re-established relations with Cuba in 2009, the last country in Latin
America to do so.

The Cubans began arriving a month ago on their dangerous 7,000-kms
(4,400-mile) overland trek from Ecuador, where they could fly without a
visa to the Mexican-U.S. border, where Cubans are given legal passage
into the United States.

When the United States reached detente with Cuba a year ago, it led to a
spike in Cuban emigration, partly due to fears the Americans would end
the special treatment that grants them residence with relative ease.

The issue reached crisis proportions when Costa Rica broke up a gang of
human smugglers, leaving the Cubans in the lurch.

Costa Rica closed its border after arresting the smugglers, then granted
the Cubans temporary visas to pass through.

But Nicaragua, a country further to the north that is also a close ally
of Cuba's, refused to follow suit, leaving Costa Rica with an ever
growing number of migrants.

Nearly 5,000 are stuck in shelters on the border and an estimated 1,300
to 1,500 are held up in Panama, one country to the south, attempting to
move into Costa Rica.

Cuba has repeatedly blamed the United States' Cold War-era immigration
policy for enticing its citizens to risk their lives and fostering human
smuggling.

Solis has promised not to deport the Cubans and to continue looking for
a way to get them to the United States.

(Reporting by Marc Frank and Daniel Trotta; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Source: Costa Rica to tell Cuba it cannot keep aiding stalled migrants -
Yahoo News -
http://news.yahoo.com/costa-rica-tell-cuba-cannot-keep-aiding-stalled-033133903.html