MIAMI (Reuters) – The international development community, especially financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank, and the United States should reach out to communist Cuba as it pursues economic reforms and bring it “in from the cold,” a new think tank report says.

The report published by the Brookings Institution in Washington says incipient economic reforms set in motion by Cuban President Raul Castro should be encouraged by the world’s economic policy makers because history suggests that such reforms can foster political pluralism.

PORT-AU-PRINCE/MIAMI (Reuters) – No one disputes that Haiti needs battalions of builders, developers and investors to help it rise from the ruins of last year’s earthquake.

But does it need a gun-toting Haitian army?

With debris from the catastrophe still clogging Haiti’s capital and nearby towns, a plan by President Michel Martelly to bring back to life an armed forces disbanded 16 years ago is triggering potentially divisive political and social tremors.

MIAMI (Reuters) – Cuban government reforms expanding the private sector are driving real change on the communist-ruled island, spurring hopes for economic growth and greater freedom, a U.S. pro-democracy group said on Friday.

Freedom House, often vilified by Cuban state commentators as a tool of U.S. efforts to topple communist rule in Cuba, offered the unusually positive assessment of the impact of President Raul Castro’s reforms in a report based on a field survey conducted on the island in June.

MIAMI (Reuters) – A U.S. NGO plans to start a ground-breaking cholera vaccination campaign in Haiti in January, it said Wednesday, as experts warned that efforts to combat the year-old deadly epidemic were faltering badly.

Paul Farmer, co-founder of Boston-based Partners in Health (PIH), told a conference call that Haiti’s cholera epidemic was now the most serious in the world proportionate to the size of the poor earthquake-ravaged Caribbean nation.

MIAMI (Reuters) – A convicted Cuban spy who is required to remain on probation in the United States after his scheduled release on Friday may face threats to his safety and should be sent back to the communist island, his lawyer says.

Rene Gonzalez will be the first to be released out of the so-called “Cuban Five” group of jailed agents who were arrested in 1998 and convicted of spying in 2001 in a Miami court.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – As the world’s finance czars clamored this week for decisive action to clean up Europe’s debt crisis, ministers from the planet’s poorest region Africa were quietly saying “been there, done that”.

A weekend briefing by African finance ministers at IMF/World Bank meetings in Washington attracted modest media attention, but there was quiet pride in the way representatives from tiny states like Cape Verde and Gambia were able to claim concrete achievements in managing debt and public finances.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Ivory Coast will resume regular repayments on its defaulted $2.3 billion Eurobond next year and will seek a formula to make good on missed coupon payments, Finance Minister Charles Koffi Diby said on Saturday.

The minister, who was in Washington attending IMF/World bank meetings, stressed that the world’s top cocoa grower intended to honor its debt obligations as it worked to get its economy back on course after a post-election conflict.

WASHINGTON, Sept 23 (Reuters) – A global downturn may tone
down the roar of Africa’s bounding “lion” economies, but they
can keep a spring in their step if governments deepen reforms
and maintain prudent policies, the World Bank and IMF say.

Even as World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned of a
“darkening outlook” for developing nations projected by
European and U.S. debt woes, top bank and fund officials sought
to preserve a guarded positive outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa.

WASHINGTON, Sept 21 (Reuters) – The International Monetary
Fund is ready to discuss working with Malawi to try to get its
stalled IMF program back on track, the fund’s vice-president
for Africa Antoinette Sayeh said on Wednesday.

The IMF had approved a 3-year $79.4 million facility for
the small southern African state in February last year but the
program was hit by the government’s initial failure to devalue
the Malawian kwacha and implement public finance management
reforms, among other issues.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Developing countries can prepare for the threat of a global recession by improving policies to generate growth and jobs, diversifying economies, bolstering their banking sectors and readying social safety nets, the World Bank’s top economists said on Wednesday.

Bank chief economist and senior vice president Justin Yifu Lin told a round table in Washington that the sentiment in the international economic community had abruptly changed from a feeling of general confidence in global recovery six months ago to “alarming uncertainty” now facing policy-makers.