Yahoo! June 14, 2000
Runner Sotomayor Gets Drug Hearing
MONTE CARLO, Monaco 14 (AP) - Cuba's Javier Sotomayor, the world record-holder in the high jump, attended a final arbitration hearing Wednesday into his positive test for cocaine.
The International Amateur Athletic Federation said a final ruling on the case was not expected until next week. Sotomayor faces a two-year suspension if found guilty.
Sotomayor tested positive at last year's Pan American Games in Winnipeg and was stripped of his gold medal in the high jump. He denied using drugs, while Cuban President Fidel Castro and the country's track federation claimed his urine samples had been manipulated.
``Cuba believes in Sotomayor's innocence, in his integrity and his ethics,'' Jose Ramon Fernandez, head of Cuba's Olympic Committee, said Tuesday in Havana. ``It knows his conduct and the respect he enjoys around the world.''
Sotomayor, the 1992 Olympic champion and the only high jumper to clear 8 feet, has been barred from competing pending the arbitration panel's ruling.
IAAF spokesman Giorgio Reineri said the panel heard testimony from a Cuban doctor and Christiane Ayotte, head of the Olympic drug testing laboratory in Montreal, and her assistant.
The chairman of the three-man IAAF panel, Christoph Wedder of Germany, said the body would need a few days to study the material.
``There are a lot of facts they have to go through and think about, and that takes time,'' Reineri said. ``It's not an easy case.''
The IAAF will hold an arbitration hearing Friday and Saturday into Jamaican sprinter Merlene Ottey's positive test for the banned steroid nandrolone.
U.S. Embargo Vote Reaches Beyond Cuba-House Leader
WASHINGTON, 13 (Reuters) - The House of Representatives will refuse to soften the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba because it would also unwisely ease sanctions in the Middle East, Majority Leader Dick Armey predicted on Tuesday.
Lawmakers might vote as early as Thursday on a proposal to remove limits on sales of food and medicine to Cuba, imposed four decades ago in hopes of driving Fidel Castro from control of the Communist island 100 miles from Florida.
Farm and business groups say sanctions have cut off U.S. exports from a potentially lucrative market and hurt Cuban citizens without altering Castro's behavior.
Armey, of Texas, and other Republican leaders say Castro has done nothing to merit U.S. concessions. Economic engagement cannot foster democracy, critics say, because the Cuban government controls virtually all parts of the economy.
This is the third year in a row that lawmakers have considered whether to exempt food and medicine from unilateral U.S. embargoes. As the issue has gained attention -- with Cuba as the major beneficiary -- it has become a magnet for other foreign policy disputes.
A pro-Israel group, for example, says the proposal would be a boon to Iran. President Clinton decided a year ago to allow food and medicine sale to Iran, Libya and Sudan on a case by case basis.
During a session with reporters, Armey said a wider focus on the impact of the language would help bring its defeat.
``The first thing you have to remember about the Cuba sanctions is that it is not just Cuba,'' Armey said. ``It is Cuba and a lot of Middle East nations and there are going to be a lot of people who are going to be motivated to protect that sanctions language.''
A spokesman for Washington state Republican George Nethercutt, lead sponsor of the exemption, said proponents believed they could win a House vote on the matter.
Although the issue might come to the floor this week, it could be delayed until next week if the House makes slow progress on fiscal 2001 spending bills.
Cuba Olympic Panel Backs Sotomayor
HAVANA, 13 (AP) - Cuba's Olympic committee reiterated its support of Javier Sotomayor on Tuesday, one day before a panel decides whether to let stand the world high-jump champion's two-year suspension for drug use.
``Cuba believes in Sotomayor's innocence, in his integrity and his ethics,'' Cuban Olympic Committee president Jose Ramon Fernandez told Prensa Latina news agency. ``It knows his conduct and the respect he enjoys around the world.''
The International Amateur Athletic Federation suspended Sotomayor after he tested positive for cocaine at last summer's Pan American Games in Winnipeg.
An IAAF arbitration panel is studying Cuba's appeal and was to issue its final ruling Wednesday in Monte Carlo. It has interviewed witnesses, including a member of Montreal's anti-drug laboratory and a medical representative from the Cuban track federation.
If the appeal is rejected, the two-year suspension will stand, which would rule him out of the Sept. 15-Oct. 1 Sydney Olympics.
Sotomayor was stripped of his gold medal at the Pan Am Games but has maintained his innocence. Cuban President Fidel Castro and the country's track federation, which cleared Sotomayor, claim the urine samples were deliberately manipulated.
The 1992 Olympic champion has been barred from competing pending the arbitration panel's ruling.
AP Corrects Cuban Business Story
HAVANA, 13 (AP) - The Associated Press reported erroneously on June 9 and June 10 that a United Airlines representative was among American business people at a US-Cuba Business Summit in Cuba.
The Italian firm that sponsored the event, Cristobal srl, gave reporters a list of participants that included an international representative of United Airlines.
But Raffaello Pellegrini, a representative of Cristobal srl, said later the list hadn't been updated to reflect those actually there. He said no United Airlines representative had traveled to Havana for the summit.
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