John McCain hit Barack Obama hard on Friday for Obama's position that he would meet with new Cuban Communist Dictator Raul Castro without any preconditions. Obama made the statement in a Democratic Debate on Thursday:

McCain noted Friday that Obama, as a U.S. Senate candidate in 2003, supported the "normalization of relations with Fidel Castro." Obama said Thursday night he supports "the eventual normalization."

"Obama said that as president he'd meet with the imprisoned island's new leader `without preconditions,"' McCain said. "So Raul Castro gets an audience with an American president, and all the prestige such a meeting confers, without having to release political prisoners, allow free media, political parties, and labor unions, or schedule internationally monitored free elections."

"Meet, talk and hope may be a sound approach in a state legislature," McCain said in a dig at Obama's experience as a state senator before his 2004 Senate election. "But it is dangerously naive in international diplomacy where the oppressed look to America for hope and adversaries wish us ill."

A McCain adviser said his campaign didn't criticize Clinton's remarks because she didn't say she'd meet with Castro with no restrictions.