Cuba's foreign minister backs Obama on embargo

BRASILIA, Aug 22 (Reuters) Cuba's foreign minister today said he welcomed a call by US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to ease the U.S. embargo on the communist-ruled island.

In an opinion piece yesterday in The Miami Herald newspaper, the Illinois senator and top rival to front-runner Hillary Clinton proposed easing restrictions for Cuban exiles to travel to the island nation or send money home.

''These declarations appear to express the sentiment of the majority of the United States,'' Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said when asked to comment on Obama's proposal.

Measures by the Bush administration to tighten the decades-old blockade were barbaric and an effort to ''try to force our people to surrender through hunger and illness,'' Roque told reporters at a conference in Brazil's capital.

The vote of Cuban exiles has been considered key for US presidential candidates to win Florida. The community is deeply divided over the trade embargo enforced by Washington since 1962.

''The blockade has to to be dismantled and the rights of Cuba respected,'' Roque said.

In the race to contest the US presidential election in November 2008, Obama trails Clinton with 26 per cent support versus her 48 per cent among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, a US Today/Gallup poll showed on Aug 7.

Cuba's ailing leader Fidel Castro, age 81, handed over power to his brother Raul last year after undergoing emergency intestinal surgery.

REUTERS GT RN2344