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Yahoo! April 18, 2002
Dorgan Demands Cuba Food Probe
By Carolyn Skorneck, Associated Press Writer Wed Apr 17,
5:07 PM ET
A leading Senate advocate of easing the embargo on Cuba — largely to
facilitate U.S. food sales — wants an investigation of the Bush
administration's decision to cancel visas for Cuban officials who planned to
discuss buying American wheat and other crops.
Sen. Byron Dorgan says the State Department told his staff the visas were
canceled because it was not administration policy to encourage agricultural
sales to Cuba.
"This is a brainless policy to be saying that we don't want to sell
grain to the Cubans," Dorgan, D-N.D., said in a statement Wednesday. "We
sell grain to communist China, communist Vietnam, and it's just absurd to tell
our farmers that our government doesn't want to sell grain to Cuba."
The senator wrote Secretary of State Colin Powell requesting an
investigation to find out who ordered the visas canceled and why, and to reverse
the decision.
"At a time when grain prices remain collapsed, it is just plain wrong
for the administration to try to impede the sale of grain to Cuba," Dorgan
said.
Recent grain sales to Cuba are allowed under a law enacted two years ago.
America's competitors readily sell their products to Cuba, often providing
credit and subsidizing the sales. The law letting U.S. producers sell food to
the island bars public or private financing of the sales.
The Cubans denied visas were officials of Alimport, the agency that has
bought $75 million in U.S. farm products in the past six months. They were
invited to the United States by farm organizations, Dorgan said.
New sales, totaling $25 million, could be postponed and some deals canceled
because of the visa rejection, said John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba
Trade and Economic Council.
A State Department official confirmed Wednesday that the administration
policy is not to encourage the sales and thus the Cuban government.
Special licenses are available to Americans to travel to Cuba to sell farm
products there, the official said.
REPORT: Cuba condemns Mexico for supporting U.N. human rights resolution
Wed Apr 17, 3:36 PM ET
MEXICO CITY - Mexico bowed to U.S. pressure in its decision to support a
U.N. resolution censuring Cuba's human rights record, the communist island's
foreign minister was quoted Wednesday as saying in a Mexico City newspaper.
In an interview with the Mexican daily Reforma, Cuban Foreign Minister
Felipe Perez Roque accused the United States of having a hand in crafting the
resolution, which was sponsored by Uruguay, and of pressing other countries to
support it.
"No American blockade or pressure will bend Cuba, but it seems that
some other countries are incapable of maintaining a dignified posture about this
issue in these times," Perez Roque said during the interview at the Cuban
Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela.
He was unavailable for comment on Wednesday.
Roque added that Cuba still has cordial feelings toward the Mexican people,
but that the communist island had lost respect for the Mexican government.
"I didn't think that the Mexican government would vote in favor of a
resolution designed and invented by the United States and whose only objective
is to justify the continuation of the blockade against Cuba," he said.
The resolution, likely to be voted on by the 53-nation U.N. Human Rights
Commission later this week in Geneva, recognizes the social rights that Cuba has
provided its people "despite an adverse international environment,"
but invites the government "to make efforts to obtain similar advances in
the area of human, civil and political rights."
The measure also asks Cuba to allow a U.N. human rights representative to
visit the island to help officials comply with the resolution — a
suggestion Cuba angrily rejected last week.
Mexico, the only Latin American country that ignored U.S. pressure to break
diplomatic ties after Cuban President Fidel Castro 's 1959 revolution, has
traditionally abstained from the annual vote.
President Vicente Fox said Monday that Mexico chose to support the
resolution because it was "not a condemnation but a position declaration
for human rights." He added that Mexico also backed it because it condemns
the U.S. economic blockade against the communist island. | 
