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Mitch McConnell Opposes Obama On Cuba

Mitch McConnell Opposes Obama On Cuba
Reuters
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Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., talks about his agenda for a GOP-controlled Congress during an interview with The Associated Press at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2014. McConnell pledged to do all he can to stop President Barack Obama's coal plant regulations, saying a White House "crusade" was devastating his state's economy. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., talks about his agenda for a GOP-controlled Congress during an interview with The Associated Press at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2014. McConnell pledged to do all he can to stop President Barack Obama's coal plant regulations, saying a White House "crusade" was devastating his state's economy. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

(Adds quotes and details)

WASHINGTON, Dec 22 (Reuters) - Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Monday he opposed U.S. President Barack Obama's plans to normalize relations with Cuba, and spoke of steps lawmakers could take to try to rein in the new policy.

Interviewed by Reuters, McConnell also said that he and Obama had discussed possible major tax reform legislation and that any effort should not focus on the country's biggest corporations alone, but also include help for small businesses.

On another international matter McConnell, who takes over in January as Senate majority leader, said North Korea's computer hacking of Sony Corp was "more serious" than an act of vandalism, taking issue with a characterization Obama had used to describe the cyberattack. McConnell declined to spell out steps he thought the United States should take in response.

Speaking by telephone from his home state of Kentucky, McConnell said he agreed with the Senate's most outspoken critics of Obama's new Cuba policy, Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Democratic Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, "that it was a mistake."

McConnell said there were some "pretty obvious" ways to keep the policy from being fully implemented. Only Congress has the power to remove some barriers to relations with Cuba since "a number of sanctions" were written into law, he said. He added the Senate would have to confirm any U.S. ambassador to Cuba.

"Look at Vietnam," McConnell said. "We normalized relations with them and they are a Communist regime that still represses people. Sometimes engagement works, sometimes it doesn't." (Reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Eric Walsh and Howard Goller)

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Before You Go

Hulton Archive/Getty Images
1950 - Cars are parked along a narrow street as pedestrians walk in the shade in Havana, Cuba. At the time, the cars were considered new models. Now the same cars are still being driven.
Elizabeth Frey/Three Lions/Getty Images
Circa 1950 - Children play outside their shanty homes in Oriente Province, Cuba.
Gilberto Ante/Roger Viollet/Getty Images
Circa 1960 - Workers at a sugar factory in Cuba. Once one of the top sugar exporters in the world, Cuba's global share in the sugar industry has fallen from 12 percent in the 1960s to just 1 percent today, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Gilberto Ante/Roger Viollet/Getty Images
Circa 1969 - Fishermen in Manzanillo. In recent years, Cuba's fishing industry has been negatively affected by overfishing, according to the Environmental Defense Fund.
Francoise De Mulder/Roger Viollet/Getty Images
1980 - A 1950s model Chevrolet is parked on the street in Havana.
Francoise De Mulder/Roger Viollet/Getty Images
1988 - Men sort empty bottles on a street in Havana.
Francoise De Mulder/Roger Viollet/Getty Images
1988 - Bodeguita del Medio, the most famous bar of Havana, frequented by Ernest Hemingway. The lifting of the trade embargo could stir a renaissance in Cuban-made spirits, specifically rum, The New York Post reports.
ADALBERTO ROQUE/AFP/Getty Images
1993 - A fisherman and his wife sell their latest catch of fish. Previously, the pair had only fished for pleasure but an economic crisis forced them to begin selling their catch.
Independent Picture Service/UIG via Getty Images
1994 - Farmer with an ox team in the Vinales Valley, Cuba. Cuban farming has struggled in recent years due to the lack of availability of modern farm equipment, The Telegraph reports.
Independent Picture Service/UIG via Getty Images
1994 - Two people on a bicycle in rural Cuba.
Independent Picture Service/UIG via Getty Images
1994 - Farm workers loading bananas.
ADALBERTO ROQUE/AFP/Getty Images
Circa 1995 - In the company of her daughter, a worker at a tobacco leaf cleaning station gets leaves ready for shipping to a tobacco manufacturer in San Juan y Matinez, site of one of the most important tobacco plantations in Cuba.
Peter Bischoff/Getty Images
1997 - A steam train outside Havana.
Ulrich Baumgarten via Getty Images
Date unknown - An old woman smokes an oversize cigar while working cigar maker Partagas in the Cuban capital Havana.
Robert Nickelsberg/Liaison
1999 - Cubans shop in one of Havana's main pesos food market Quatro Caminos in Havana. The Cuban economy was on the verge of collapsing at the time after the former Soviet Union ended its aid and the US imposed an embargo on Cuba.
ADALBERTO ROQUE/AFP/Getty Images
1999 - Hundreds of Cubans are gathered on the waterfront of Havana during a school break. A majority of Havana residents opt for the polluted waters of the capital given the fact that they cannot reach other beaches due to the lack of transportation and the shortage of gasoline in general.
Robert Nickelsberg/Liaison
1999 - Cubans stand on the balcony of their apartment in Havana, Cuba.
Ulrich Baumgarten via Getty Images
2001 - Street scene in the old part of town of the Cuban capital Havana.
ADALBERTO ROQUE/AFP/Getty Images
2001 - A man reads as he sits in a plaza surrounded by pigeons in Havana.
Julien M. Hekimian/Getty Images
2003 - A young Cuban plays baseball in the streets of Havana. The normalization of relations with Cuba could eventually cause an influx of Cuban athletes into American sports leagues, according to Vice.
Jorge Rey via Getty Images
2003 - Several earlier model American-made cars wait to be rented in Havana. New car imports have been allowed in Cuba since last year, but due to high prices, the island still largely relies on the classic cars for the time being, The Telegraph reports.
ADALBERTO ROQUE via Getty Images
2006 - A cigar roller smokes a cigar while she prepares tobacco leaves at Cuban cigar manufacturer Cohiba's factory.
Jan Sochor via Getty Images
2008 - A young Cuban woman distributes a limited amount of bread to her fellow citizens according to quotas of the Cuban rationing system, Santiago de Cuba.
STR via Getty Images
2009 - A Cuban schoolgirl sits at the foot of the entrance stairways in Havana.
AP Photo/Javier Galeano
2010 - A woman waits for a bus in front of the Capitol building in Havana.
AP Photo/Javier Galeano
2011 - A man checks the engine of his water cistern truck in Old Havana.
ADALBERTO ROQUE via Getty Images
2011 - Cigar rollers work as they listen to a reader on at H. Upmann Cigar Factory in Havana. The tradition of cigar factory readers -people that read newspapers, magazines and novels to cigar rollers- has 150 years in Cuba and there are almost 300 of them in the country.
AP Photo/Javier Galeano
2011 - Two men drive down the highway in a classic car in Soroa.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
2012 - People fill the street in a busy downtown neighborhood in Santiago de Cuba.
Ty Wright/Bloomberg via Getty Images
2012 - Cars drive down a street in Havana.
Ty Wright/Bloomberg via Getty Images
2012 - Men change the tire on an old Chevrolet in Havana.
ADALBERTO ROQUE via Getty Images
2013 - A fruits and vegetables retailer leaves a wholesale market in Havana.
AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa
2013 - A food vendor spreads out bananas. Cuba is the only country in the world that mints two national currencies, a bizarre system that even President Raul Castro acknowledges harms the island's socialist economy.
AP Photo/Franklin Reyes
2013 - A man drives a horse drawn carriage past a port under construction in Mariel Bay.
Roberto Machado Noa via Getty Images
2014 - Horse drawn carriage continues to be a regular form of transportation in Cuba.
AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa
2014 - A pregnant woman holds her belly while she talks on a public phone at a special maternity unit for high-risk pregnancies in Havana. The country's low birth rate problem is a result of some of the most notable successes of its 55-year-old socialist revolution.

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