By Pascal Fletcher
HAVANA, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Nearly 100 U.S. health care companies opened a pioneering commercial exhibition in Cuba Tuesday, seeking sales opportunities in a market muddied by hostile politics and entangled by bureaucratic hurdles.
The exhibition organized by PWN Exibicon International, a Connecticut-based U.S. firm, brought to Havana close to 300 American businessmen, the largest group ever to visit the communist-ruled Caribbean island since the 1959 revolution.
The five-day event was approved by both the U.S. and Cuban governments, which do not have formal diplomatic ties and whose already sensitive relations have been strained in recent weeks by the custody dispute over Cuban shipwreck boy Elian Gonzalez.
PWN President Peter Nathan said the show responded to moves by U.S. President Bill Clinton in recent years to facilitate "humanitarian" licenced sales of U.S. medical products to Cuba under the 38-year-old U.S. trade embargo against the island.
"I think that sales will come from this event at some point ... my concern is to ensure that U.S. businesses do not get slotted out of this market," Nathan told reporters.
Cuban government officials and two U.S. Democrat congresswomen from California, Maxine Waters and Barbara Lee, attended the opening at a Havana exhibition center.
Also present was Hector Perez, the head of Cuba's Chamber of Commerce, who said the Cuban side was "ready to sign contracts" with the U.S. visitors, which included big health care companies like Baxter, Searle, Eli Lilly and Pfizer.
But Perez said the licencing procedures laid down by the U.S. authorities created delays and bureaucratic hurdles.
"The main thing is that this is not a normal business," he added, repeating the Cuban government's longstanding call for the complete lifting of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.
Cuban President Fidel Castro's government has condemned U.S. sanctions as an act of "genocide" against the Cuban people. Cuban leaders often repeat in public that the island cannot buy "even an aspirin" from the United States.
U.S. officials insist that because of the improved licencing process U.S. medical sales to Cuba can take place.
They say that in 1998 and first half 1999 the U.S. government granted licenses for the export by U.S. companies of medicines and medical products to Cuba worth $45 million.
Asked by reporters how many of these sales had actually gone through in practice, Perez replied: "Zero". "The information I have is that there hasn't been any," he added.
U.S. officials said they believed only a "very small" volume of sales had taken place, but could give no details.
Many exhibitors said they viewed the show as a starting point to explore the Cuban market, meet Cuban medical professionals and commercial counterparts and familiarize themselves with the procedures for licenced sales to Cuba.
21:16 01-25-00
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