U.S., Cuba Said to Be in Accord on News Bureaus
The Clinton Administration and Cuba are planning to allow news organizations to exchange bureaus in an agreement that would break 25 years of difficult access for journalists, the Miami Herald reported Saturday.
The announcement of the plan is expected early next year, the Herald reported, quoting unnamed State Department and White House sources.
After Havana expelled the last U.S. correspondent based in Cuba in 1969, the United States shut down all Cuban news bureaus except the one at U.N. headquarters. Reporters from both countries have since had to apply for visas on a temporary, case-by-case basis.
The visa requests of American journalists are often turned down or ignored by Cuban officials.
The Administration plan calls for setting up reciprocal news bureaus in each country and for the approval of licenses that would allow U.S. news organizations to spend money in Cuba to establish operations there.
Cuban officials declined to say publicly how they would respond to the initiative.
The Administration took a step toward opening news links with Cuba by granting visas to nearly a dozen Cuban journalists to cover the Summit of the Americas earlier this month in Miami. One of the reporters defected.
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