SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is leaving an Organization of American States conference in the Honduras saying that the group has reached no consensus on moves to allow Cuba to rejoin.
Clinton told reporters before departing for Egypt that a frantic day of negotiations had failed to produce agreement among the 34 members about what to do about Cuba. The U.S. had wanted to tie Cuba's potential readmittance to the group to democratic reform. But socialist Latin American leaders wanted to simply revoke Cuba's nearly 50-year-old suspension from the group.
Clinton said negotiations will continue in her absence.
President Barack Obama's top diplomat heard multiple complaints from fellow diplomats as others at the group's annual general assembly here demanded immediate action to rescind Cuba's nearly 50-year-old suspension without conditions.
"The United States looks forward to the day when a democratic Cuba rejoins the inter-American system," Clinton said in prepared remarks to the assembly. "Until then, we will seek new ways to engage Cuba that benefit the people of both nations and of the hemisphere."
"We will continue to advocate for democratic governance in Cuba and throughout the Americas," she said. "And the people of this hemisphere look to the OAS to do the same."
But with divisions deep on those issues, Clinton and the foreign ministers of nine other countries formed a working group that was locked in intense negotiations over a compromise that could see either see a vote on Tuesday or a delay.
Earlier, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, the host of the meeting, urged that the 1962 resolution that suspended Cuba's membership be revoked during the session, calling its Cold War-era passage and the U.S. embargo on Cuba a "day of infamy" and a grave injustice.
"Friends, it is time to correct that mistake," he told the meeting. "Were we to leave this place without rescinding that decision . . . we would be colluding with that mindset of yesterday."
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said the United States is using the OAS as a tool of repression and said Cuba's 1962 suspension was due to the support of former Latin American dictators "imposed and used by the Yankees."
"The OAS continues to be an instrument of domination of the United States," Ortega told a news conference after the opening session. He accused the Obama administration of being no different from previous administrations.
"The president has changed, but not American policy," the Sandinista leader said.
Paraguay's President Fernando Lugo said the foreign ministers "should show in Honduras that there's a unified America, with no discrimination, with no veto to economic models, social or political that could be freely adopted by every country."
The United States is largely alone in the OAS in demanding outright conditions. Almost all other members of the OAS have called for Cuba to be allowed to rejoin the 34-nation group without conditions.
Faced with a solid bloc of countries opposed to conditions, diplomats said the outcome of Tuesday's meetings was in doubt and that a vote on Cuba may have to be delayed.
That prospect angered representatives of the region's growing number of socialist-run countries like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Bolivia. All were pressing for a vote on Tuesday even though Cuba has expressed no interest in rejoining the bloc.
The organization generally makes decision by consensus;proponents can push ahead with a resolution that needs only a two-thirds majority, or 23 votes, to pass.
Forcing a vote could put Clinton in a difficult position because regional and U.S. officials say there are easily enough countries to pass it unless a consensus emerges to delay action until the working group delivers its findings.
The Obama administration is toeing a delicate line as it reaches out to Cuban leader Raul Castro by lifting restrictions on money transfers and travel to the island by Americans with family there.
Cuba has agreed to a U.S. proposal to resume immigration talks with Washington that former President George W. Bush suspended in 2003 and to negotiations on restarting direct mail service between the two countries.
But the Castros say they want a full lifting of the decades-old U.S. embargo on Cuba, something the administration has refused to consider without reforms.
Clinton was at Tuesday's meeting as the representative of the last country in the Western Hemisphere without full diplomatic ties with Cuba.
El Salvador had been the only other one, but in his first act as the country's first leftist president, Mauricio Funes on Monday restored his country's diplomatic relations with Cuba that had been broken in 1961.
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Associated Press writers Nestor Ikeda and Freddy Cuevas contributed to this report.
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