By Andrew Cawthorne
HAVANA, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Scores of U.S. medical firms set up stalls on Monday in Havana for the first American commercial exhibition on the communist-run Caribbean island in the four decades since President Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution.
The nearly 100 companies here for the five-day U.S. Health-Care Exhibition would like to sell medical products to Cuba under recent modifications to the long-standing U.S. embargo or in a future post-sanctions scenario.
Tinkering to the embargo regulations in recent years theoretically allows health-care sales to Cuba for humanitarian ends via special licenses and subject to end-use monitoring.
``There are 11 million people here. That's a market, and these companies want to be working with that market in the future,'' exhibition organiser Peter Nathan told reporters before the fair's formal opening on Tuesday.
Nathan, of Connecticut-based PWN Exhibicon International LLC, is a veteran of organising trade shows in strained international situations, including the first U.S. electronics exhibitions in China in the 1980s.
Cuba blames its shortage of medicines squarely on the U.S. embargo, which it says encapsulates a policy of ``genocide'' toward the island. Modifications to the sanctions relating to health-care sales have been unworkable because of bureaucratic requirements Washington puts on the licenses, it
argues.
NOT ``A SINGLE ASPIRIN''
President Fidel Castro, whose revolution led to the imposition of the full U.S. embargo in 1961, has said publicly that Cuba has not been allowed to buy ``a single aspirin'' from its northern neighbour.
Washington, however, disputes that, saying that Cuba could now easily buy medical products via the licenses but lacks either the cash or the political will to do so.
U.S. officials tracking this week's exhibition in Havana said between 40 and 50 licenses for medical sales to Cuba had been issued since 1992, with $19 million of sales authorised in 1998 and $26 million in the first half of 1999, for example.
In practice, however, barely anything has been sold, the officials acknowledged.
Nathan, whose trade fair is intended to end that situation and kick-start medical sales to Cuba, said both sides were to blame for preventing the establishment of commercial lines to the island in U.S. health-care products.
``The Cubans like American products. It would be much cheaper for them. They currently buy American products anyway through third countries, so obviously they would prefer to get them direct,'' he said.
Nathan warned, however, that ``I don't think these sales to Cuba can be made overnight.''
250 MILLION IN RAW MATERIALS
Havana currently imports at least $50 million annually in finished medical products and spends about five times that on imports of raw materials to produce medicines here, according to foreign estimates.
The U.S. companies will be showing their products and services to an estimated 8,000 Cuban health sector professionals for the first four days of the fair, then throwing the show open to the public on Saturday.
In a reminder of continued official tensions between Havana and Washington, the U.S. government has been denied permission to set up a booth at the exhibition, although members of the U.S. diplomatic mission here will be present.
U.S. officials said bilateral tensions caused by the continuing custody dispute over 6-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez had worried a few companies but had not significantly affected the setting up of the health-care exhibition.
Cuba has been holding massive protests -- often punctuated by vitriolic anti-American rhetoric -- for the last two months in an effort to win Elian's repatriation from Miami, where he has lived since being picked up at sea after a capsizing.
``We are delighted this exhibition is taking place,'' a U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. ``We so often hear from the Cubans that we do not sell medicines to them, and this event is a clear demonstration that we do not embargo the sale of medical items to Cuba.''
20:59 01-24-00
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