Pelosi: No quick end to US travel ban to Cuba

Nov 19, 2009, 20:08 GMT

Washington - Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the US House of Representatives, said Thursday she expected no quick action on ending the United States' decades-long travel ban with Cuba.

House Speaker Pelosi said it was one of a long list of legislative priorities. Her comments came as a congressional committee held a hearing aimed at drumming up support for ending the travel ban, which is part of a wider embargo put in place a few years after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959.

'I've always been a supporter of lifting the travel ban to Cuba. Right now we are interested in job creation and investments in health care. I don't know when that would be coming to the floor,' she said in a weekly press conference.

Supporters of lifting the travel ban argue it has done little to promote democratic reforms on the communist island. Some travel restrictions on US residents with family members in Cuba have already been lifted under President Barack Obama's administration.

Human Rights Watch in a report Wednesday said Cuban President Raul Castro has maintained the same 'repressive machinery' that existed under his brother Fidel, who was forced by illness to give up power in 2006.