PRESIDENT Barack Obama faces many problems in his professed determination to have an “honest and serious” debate with Congress over ending the US blockade on Cuba.

The major legal-political obstacle is the raft of legislation erected on Capitol Hill to reserve any decision on this issue to Congress rather than to the president.

Add to this the sabre-rattling of several senators and representatives dependent on the votes and finance of the well-organised anti-Castro Cuban-American community, especially in Miami.

Throw in the rabid-right figures currently heading the Republican Party that holds sway in both houses of Congress.

Then there’s the tiny but yappy dissident “community” in Cuba that has been sustained for years by meaty bones thrown to it by the US Interests Section in Havana.

One such welfare dependent, Guillermo Farinas, accuses Obama of “betrayal,” complaining that he had been promised consultation before any action was taken.

Clearly a case of inability to understand the connection between tail, dog and wagging.

No less dependent for cash and publicity has been anti-government celebrity blogger Yoani Sanchez, who exposed her sympathies when assessing the agreement to release three Cuban patriots in US jails for USAid agent Alan Gross.

In her view, the exchange was of “a peaceful man, embarked on the humanitarian adventure of providing internet connectivity to a group of Cubans, for intelligence agents who caused significant damage and sorrow with their actions.”

Sanchez’s upside-down view of reality is reflected in Senator John McCain’s accusation that Obama is carrying out a policy of “appeasement of autocratic dictators, thugs and adversaries, diminishing America’s influence in the world.”

His Republican colleague and House Speaker John Boehner identifies “a long line of mindless concessions to a dictatorship that brutalises its people and schemes with our enemies.”

These people are clearly living in a fantasy world, apparently unaware that the only part of Cuban territory where people are jailed without due process of law, tortured and denied their human rights is in US-occupied Guantanamo Bay.

Cuban-American Republican Senator Marco Rubio complains that Obama’s new tack will go “a long way in providing the economic lift that the Castro regime needs to become permanent fixtures in Cuba for generations to come,” as though the revolution was tottering on its last legs.

These outdated cold warriors are still to grasp that, as Obama said, their approach has failed to advance US interests.

US citizens don’t support it. Even Cuban-Americans support closer US-Cuba links.

Only Israel backs the US over the anti-Cuba blockade at the UN general assembly. Latin America in its entirety — once demeaned as Washington’s backyard — rejects it and yet Rubio has spearheaded similar economic blockade legislation against Venezuela.

In contrast, US Chamber of Commerce president and chief executive Thomas J Donohue believes that “an open dialogue and commercial exchange between the US and Cuban private sectors will bring shared benefits.”

US farmers and businesses are uniquely placed to benefit from changes in Cuba described by President Castro as “updating our economic model in order to build a prosperous and sustainable socialism.”

Obama has had to accept, as no other US president before during the Cuban revolution’s development, that Havana will brook no curbs on its national independence.

The US and Cuba have different goals and principles but can live alongside each other in co-operation and even friendship if the basic principle of non-interference is respected.