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Yahoo! December 11, 2002.
Castro says Cubans would have dominated Central American Games
Mon Dec 9, 3:04 PM ET
HAVANA - Closing a major Cuban sports festival, President Fidel Castro said
Cuban athletes could have won nearly half of the gold-medals at the
just-finished Central American and Caribbean Games that his country boycotted.
Castro closed what Cuba billed as a "National Olympics" on Sunday
night. The sports festival was organized after Cuba pulled out of the regional
event, accusing host El Salvador (news - web sites) of failing to assure
security for the country's delegation.
More than 1,500 athletes — 46 of them invited from other countries —
took part in the Cuban games.
"Eleven national records were set and no fewer than 34 performances
would be constituted Central American records in El Salvador," Castro said.
"The Cuban athletes would have been in condition to have won no fewer
than 209 victories out of the total of 436 contested, of almost half of the gold
medals," Castro said at Havana's Sport City before more than 12,000 people.
Castro handed out medals to some of the winners and announced that another
edition of the festival would be held in 2004.
The team from eastern Cuba finished in first place with 119 gold medals, to
108 for those from central Cuba and 107 for those from the west.
With Cuba absent in El Salvador, Mexico for the first time topped the medals
table in the Central American games.
Kansas, Cuba Discuss Agriculture Ties
By John Rice, Associated Press Writer. Mon Dec 9, 5:23 PM
ET
HAVANA (AP) - Political and farm officials from Kansas met Monday with Cuban
President Fidel Castro after calling for the United States to normalize
relations with the communist nation. A Cuban official said his country will have
purchased about $175 million from U.S. producers by the year's end.
Lt. Gov. Gary Sherrer, a Republican, told a news conference that there
should be a "normal political relationship" between the United States
and Cuba. John Moore, the Democrat who will replace Sherrer as lieutenant
governor on Jan. 13, said he also supports "normalization of relations."
No deals were signed during the five-day outing, but Sherrer said he
believed that the trip "will be very meaningful in terms of dollars of
trade for Kansas."
The delegation had a 2-hour, 45-minute meeting and lunch with the Cuban
leader immediately before leaving for home.
"It was talking about farming and crops and sorghum and soybeans,"
said trip organizer Kirby Jones. But Castro "didn't get into any specifics"
about a trade deal, Jones said.
"Castro said he'd ... hundreds or thousands of American farmers and
said he'd learned a lot about American agriculture," Jones said.
During a news conference earlier, Sherrer said he believes that "the
majority of the Congress and a majority of the American people believe that
relaxing the embargo is the proper direction."
President Bush has opposed such measures, however.
U.S. farmers and agribusiness companies have increasingly attacked the
four-decade-old trade embargo against Cuba that is most strongly supported by
Cuban exile organizations based in Florida.
Pedro Alvarez, head of the Cuban food import concern Alimport, said Cuban
food imports will reach about $950 million this year and were expected to rise
to about $1.4 billion by 2005 or 2006.
He said Cuba has signed agreements to buy about $250 million in food from
the United States and will have taken delivery of about $175 million by the end
of the year.
The United States began imposing limits on trade with Cuba in the early
1960s, shortly after the revolution led by Castro overthrew dictator Fulgencio
Batista. But a law passed in 2000 created an exemption in the embargo, allowing
direct sales of food.
The first direct shipment of food to the island in almost 40 years took
place in December 2001. | 
