Yahoo! May 15, 2000
AmCham Cuba Luncheon at National Press Club in Washington, D.C
Monday May 15, 9:06 am Eastern Time. Company Press Release
ADVISORY/AmCham Cuba Luncheon at National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to feature President of PWN Exhibicon International L.L.C. and President of U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, Inc.
WESTPORT, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 15, 2000--Mr. Peter W. Nathan, President of Westport, Connecticut-based PWN Exhibicon International L.L.C., the company that organized the U.S. Healthcare Exhibition held in Havana, Republic of Cuba, in January 2000, and Mr. John S. Kavulich II, President of
the New York City, New York-based U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, Inc., will be the speakers at a luncheon at the National Press Club (13th floor, 529 14th Street, N.W.) in Washington, D.C., at 12:00 p.m. on Tuesday, 16 May 2000,
The luncheon is sponsored by Washington, D.C.-based The American Chamber of Commerce of Cuba in the United States, Inc. (AmCham Cuba). For information, contact Ms. Phoebe Lansdale at telephone (202) 833-3648; Facsimile (202) 358-3549; or E-mail: amchamcuba@aol.com
Mr. Nathan will give a presentation about genesis of the U.S. Healthcare Exhibition which included 97 United States-based companies and more than 300 business representatives. Mr. Kavulich will give a presentation on ``Cuba Today From A United States Business Perspective.''
For additional information on PWN Exhibicon International L.L.C., access http://www.cubaexhibitions.com on the Internet. For additional information about the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, access http://www.cubatrade.org on the Internet.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the United States Department of the Treasury in Washington, D.C., licensed PWN Exhibicon International L.L.C., to arrange and to hold an exhibition within Cuba to promote the sale of United States-produced and United States-distributed healthcare
products. The Bureau of Export Administration (BXA) of the United States Department of Commerce in Washington, D.C., licensed the products to be exhibited at the U.S. Healthcare Exhibition. The U.S. Healthcare Exhibition was the single largest grouping of United States-based companies and single
largest grouping of representatives of United States companies to visit the Republic of Cuba for a commercial exhibition in more than forty years.
Mr. Peter W. Nathan has more than forty-four years of experience in the exhibition industry, and previously organized the first trade shows for United States companies that were held within the People's Republic of China and within the former U.S.S.R. Mr. Nathan is a founding member and
director of the Society of Independent Show Organizers (SISO) and Vice Chairman of the New York Area Chapter of the International Association for Exposition Management (IAEM).
The U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council's purpose is to provide an efficient and sustainable educational structure in which the United States business community may access accurate, consistent, and timely information and analysis on matters and issues of interest regarding United
States-Republic of Cuba commercial, economic, and political relations. The U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council does not take positions with respect to United States-Republic of Cuba political relations.
Elian to Grandmothers: I Miss Mom
By Anita Snow, Associated Press Writer.
HAVANA, 15 (AP) - Elian Gonzalez wished his grandmothers a happy Mother's Day but said during a telephone message that was videotaped and shown later Sunday here on state television that he missed his mother.
``Congratulations!'' Elian told his maternal grandmother Raquel Rodriguez in a telephone call captured on videotape Sunday morning. He told her he had drawn her a flower on her special Mother's Day card.
``Everyone is here,'' the 6-year-old said in the call from the farm in Maryland where he is staying with his father, stepmother, half-brother and playmates from Cuba. ``Everyone is here but my mama. She's missing''
Rodriguez is the mother of Elian's mother, who died in the fatal sea journey last November. She appeared to weep during the few minutes of the call shown during an evening television show.
The broadcast was among the most personal and touching of the programs aired in recent weeks on the Elian Gonzalez case.
Dressed in their Sunday best, Rodriguez and Elian's paternal grandmother Mariela Quintana sat in a television studio decorated with fresh flowers while watching the tape of their call with Elian. They were also shown a series of interviews conducted with children from across the island offering
love and encouragement.
``Don't worry, Elian will be back with you soon,'' a boy of about 10 said. ``And you shouldn't feel alone: all of the Cuban people are behind you. ''
Mother's Day has special significance in Cuba and during the day it is not uncommon for complete strangers to greet women in the street with a Mother's Day greeting.
At the end of the show, the grandmothers were given floral bouquets wrapped in ribbons and cellphone, and a big cake.
During the show, Elian's godmother, Lourdes Martell, from his hometown of Cardenas, remembered the 6-year-old's mother Elisabeth, who perished in the sea journey that led to the international custody dispute over the boy.
``Elisabeth was a good mother, a good daughter, a good woman,'' Martell said. ``I admired her very much.''
Martell's statement appeared to contradict arguments by attorneys for Elian's Miami relatives, who have said that if Elian is returned to Cuba he will be taught that his mother was a traitor to the communist revolution.
Fidel Castro's government all along has portrayed Elian's mother as a good person, and said she was bullied into taking her son on the journey by her boyfriend.
Elian was rescued off the coast of Florida in late November after his mother and 10 others died when their boat sank during an illegal journey from Cuba to the United States.
Elian was reunited with his father Juan Miguel Gonzalez in the United States last month after an armed federal raid on the Miami relatives' home where they boy had been staying.
A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court in Atlanta, one step below the U.S. Supreme Court, heard arguments Thursday on a request by Elian's Miami relatives that a political asylum hearing be held for the boy. Father and son must remain in the United States pending the ruling, which is not
expected for several weeks.
Cuba Accuses U.S. of Blocking Havana Cup Regatta
By Andrew Cawthorne
HAVANA, 12 (Reuters) - Cuba blamed the United States on Friday for blocking a controversial annual Florida-to-Havana regatta that draws hundreds of American sailors and is billed as a bridge-building event across the political divide.
``It is very regrettable that the U.S. Treasury Department has taken this decision without any basis in law,'' Jose Miguel Diaz Escrich, who heads the state-run Hemingway International Nautical Club in Havana, told a news conference.
He was announcing the cancellation of the annual Havana Cup regatta between Tampa Bay and the Cuban capital, scheduled for later in May. The race, with a seven-decade history, attracted a record 220 U.S. craft and 1,300 sailors last year.
According to Escrich, Washington decided this year to inform organizers at the Florida end of the event that they would violate the U.S. embargo against Havana if they went ahead.
The U.S. notification went to the Ocean Racing Ventures club in St. Petersburg on April 28, Escrich said. He argued, however, that individual participation in the race on a ``fully hosted'' basis by Cuba would not violate Washington's four-decade-old economic sanctions on the communist-run
island.
Cuba Paid In Principle
In previous years, Cuba undertook in principle to pay the American sailors' expenses once they were berthed in Havana's Hemingway Marina.
That step ensured in theory they do not break provisions in the embargo -- or ``blockade,'' as President Fidel Castro calls it -- on the spending of money by Americans in Cuba.
Although in previous years the American sailors enjoyed waivers on customs and docking fees and free electricity and water services, in practice many inevitably spent money on food, drinks and trips into the Cuban capital.
Escrich, one of Cuba's senior maritime officials, said political factors had influenced the Treasury Department this year.
``You can see there are political pressures linked to the case of Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez,'' he said, referring to the custody dispute over the 6-year-old shipwreck survivor.
The case has pitted Castro against his archenemies in the anti-communist Cuban-American community of Florida. Last year Cuban exile groups protested fiercely against the Havana Cup race, buzzing U.S. boats as they left Tampa Bay.
Escrich said the State Department's action was an ''arbitrary measure'' that had wrecked ``a great party of friendship for the international nautical community.''
Smaller Regatta Still On
Cuba still hopes to go ahead with a smaller regatta in Havana Bay on May 30, in which some 150 boats from the United States and elsewhere may take part, he said.
In the United States, sources said the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control had issued a cease-and-desist order to U.S. company Ocean Racing Ventures because it had not been licensed as a ``fully hosted company'' arranging for the sponsoring of hotel, food and other expenses of
Americans in Cuba.
``Subject to the trade embargo with Cuba, U.S. companies that are not service providers licensed by OFAC cannot provide services which include promotion, soliciting, arranging and organizing other persons' travel to Cuba,'' a U.S. Treasury spokesman said when asked about the information from
Havana.
The Havana Cup regatta began in 1930 but was interrupted in 1960 after Castro's 1959 revolution and the souring of bilateral relations. Revived in 1994, the tournament quickly regained popularity.
Before this year's cancellation, the regatta had formed part of a blossoming of cultural, sporting and academic exchanges officially encouraged by Havana and Washington despite their political differences.
Cuba Frees Felix Bonne, a Well-Known Dissident
By Andrew Cawthorne
HAVANA, 12 (Reuters) - Cuba unexpectedly freed on Friday one of the communist-run island's best-known imprisoned dissidents, academic Felix Bonne, raising speculation that more liberations might follow in coming days.
Cuban state security officers gave the 60-year-old Bonne -- a member of the so-called Group of Four dissidents whose 1997 imprisonment brought appeals from round the world -- his ''conditional liberty'' papers during a home visit in Havana.
In his first interview since being released, Bonne told Reuters he planned to continue his opposition activities, said he had not been ill-treated in prison in Havana and sent a message of thanks to foreign supporters.
``I would never want to be taken prisoner again, but I realize that doesn't depend on me, since my ideas have not changed at all, and I want the best for my fatherland,'' he said at his modest home in the Boyeros district of Havana.
Bonne said he could not believe it when he was handed the conditional freedom order while on a temporary home visit from prison. His first reaction was to embrace his wife, Maria, and the pair wept together.
No ``Vexations'' In Prison
The dissident and author, expelled in the past from a physics teaching post at Havana University, said his prison treatment was ``normal, very respectful, without vexations.'' ''They did nothing to make me feel humiliated or degraded,'' he said.
Bonne sent a message of thanks to a list of foreign governments and personalities who had appealed for the four dissidents' release, ranging from Pope John Paul II to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
He had been serving a four-year sentence after his jailing in July 1997 and conviction in March 1998 on a charge of inciting sedition, the same accusation against the other three. He had been suffering from asthma and heart problems, his family said.
He was apparently freed under Cuban legislation allowing conditional freedom for inmates who have served more than half their sentences and are considered to have behaved well.
President Fidel Castro's government rejects the Group of Four's claim to represent peaceful opposition to his one-party system, saying they, like all dissidents on the island, were U.S.-paid ``counterrevolutionary'' law-breakers and traitors.
Diplomats in Havana welcomed Bonne's freeing and urged the Cuban government to follow it up with further releases.
``This will be very well-received abroad. Despite the fact that they have been in jail so long, their release now is obviously better than at the end of their sentences,'' said a diplomat from the European Union, which has appealed several times to Castro to release the four.
FUTURE RELEASES?
The diplomats speculated that two other members of the Group of Four, economist Marta Beatriz Roque and lawyer Rene Gomez Manzano, might also be released soon. Roque is serving a 3 1/2-year sentence and Gomez a four-year sentence.
But they were less hopeful about Vladimiro Roca, 56, a former Cuban fighter pilot and the son of deceased communist hero Blas Roca, who got the stiffest sentence of the group -- five years -- after being singled out as the ringleader.
The three dissidents, except for Roca, had been allowed out of prison several times in recent months on temporary home visits seen as a preparation for possible release.
Bonne said he was ``infinitely'' grateful for his release, ''especially for my family.''
In a cautious analysis of Cuba's political and economic panorama, the dissident said the Caribbean island was in a ''very critical situation'' and needed a ``peaceful transition.'' He declined to elaborate further, saying, ``You have to be very careful because our government is highly
sensitive.''
The case of the four has in recent years become a focus for foreign criticism of Castro's human rights record and has brought appeals from rights groups and leaders around the world. The four were all listed by Amnesty International as prisoners of conscience.
Dissidents here say Cuba is holding nearly 400 political prisoners. The Havana government denies it hold political prisoners.
Cuba says the Group of Four was proved guilty of receiving material backing from the United States, urging a boycott of elections, intimidating foreign investors and making illicit contacts with anti-Castro Cuban exile groups.
They were all jailed in July 1997 after issuing documents, including one titled ``The Fatherland Belongs to All,'' and holding news conferences at which they criticized the ruling Communist Party and urged reforms.
U.S. Using Elian Case To Prod Cuba
By George Gedda, Associated Press Writer .
WASHINGTON, 13 (AP) - The Clinton administration believes it struck a blow for family reunification when it returned Elian Gonzalez to his father. And in talks with Cuban officials, it will use that case as leverage in efforts on behalf of Cubans prevented from joining U.S.-based relatives.
U.S. officials believe there are hundreds of Cubans with U.S. visas who have not been allowed to leave Cuba because they lack exit visas.
The officials expect to raise the matter at the next bilateral meeting on migration issues - the only issue on which regular contacts exist.
At that session, Cuba will have its own set of grievances, particularly American policies that it says encourage illegal migration and have caused the deaths of countless fleeing Cubans over the years.
The last meeting on migration issues was held in December. The next tentatively was set for this month but may be delayed.
The officials say it is inconsistent for Cuba to have demanded that Elian be turned over to his father while ignoring the plight of Cubans denied permission to join U.S.-based relatives.
U.S. rules permit 20,000 Cubans to migrate to the United States annually. Preference goes to Cubans with close family ties in the United States. Refugees also receive priority consideration. In addition, U.S. officials run an annual visa lottery in which the winners are chosen by chance.
Elian Gonzalez was forcibly seized by U.S. immigration agents on April 22 from Miami relatives and transferred to the custody of his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. They are awaiting a court decision on whether the boy should be allowed to return to Cuba.
Rep. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., said Cuban reluctance to permit the departure of Cubans with U.S. visas demonstrates ``the hypocrisy of (President Fidel) Castro's position on family reunification.''
While lacking precise figures, Cuban officials say the Clinton administration exaggerates when it claims that hundreds are awaiting exit visas. To the extent that a family was split by a defection, the Cuban side argues the blame rests with the defector and not the Cuban government.
In addition, Cuba believes that a citizen who has had long years of the free education Cuba provides has a duty to pay back by using his skills, at least for several years, before being allowed to emigrate.
U.S. officials cite two prominent cases in which Cuban families have not been allowed to reunite.
One involves Luis Grave de Peralta, a dissident scientist who was freed from prison in 1996 through the efforts of then-Rep. Bill Richardson, D-N.M. He was granted permission to come to the United States.
Grave de Peralta said last week in a telephone interview from Lubbock, Texas, that the Cuban mission in Havana has granted exit visas to six children from his family, but not to six adults even though, he says, Richardson had received assurances that all 12 would be permitted to leave.
One of the six children, Grave de 1/4 13-year-old son, joined him in Lubbock a week ago.
A second case cited by officials involves Jose Cohen of Miami, a former Cuban intelligence officer whose wife and three children are stranded in Cuba.
Cuba, meanwhile, is launching a campaign to encourage Washington to annul a 1966 law that allows Cubans who reach U.S. shores to remain in the United States, a right granted to people of no other nationality.
Many have drowned in the process, including Elian's mother, who died while attempting a crossing with her son in November.
Castro has referred to the 1966 law as a ``killing machine.''
The Clinton administration does not encourage Cubans to undertake the dangerous trek but says Cubans wishing to leave should take advantage of opportunities available for risk-free emigration.
Cubans Press for Elian's Return
By Vivian Sequera, Associated Press Writer.
HAVANA, 13 (AP) - With folk dances and political speeches, tens of thousands of Cubans on Saturday celebrated the 45th anniversary of Fidel Castro's release from prison by pressing for the return of Elian Gonzalez to his communist homeland.
An estimated 50,000 government supporters massed outside the prison on the Isle of Youth - then known as the Isle of Pines - where Castro was jailed for a little less than two years after he led the disastrous July 26, 1953 attack that launched his revolutionary battle.
The rally on the island, located just south of Cuba's main island, was led by Gen. Raul Castro, Fidel Castro's younger brother and chief of the Revolutionary Armed Forces.
Raul Castro was jailed on the island with his brother, and released at the same time under a political amnesty by then-President Fulgencio Batista.
``Our legacy for the present and future generations is ... we are and will continue to be in a state of combat,'' said Pedro Miret, vice president of Cuba's Council of Ministers and among those who attacked the Moncada army barracks in the eastern city of Santiago in 1953.
``Today, we say with our people: 'Bring back Elian!' '' Miret shouted to the crowd decked out in T-shirts printed with the 6-year-old's image.
Cuba has promised to keep up the fight for Elian's return until his case is resolved.
A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court in Atlanta, one step below the U.S. Supreme Court, heard arguments Thursday on a request by Elian's Miami relatives that a political asylum hearing be held for the boy. A ruling is not expected for several weeks.
Elian was rescued off the coast of Florida in late November after his mother and 10 others died when their boat sank during an illegal journey from Cuba to the United States.
Father and son were reunited in the United States last month after an armed federal raid on the Miami relatives' home where they boy had been staying. They must remain in the United States pending the court's decision.
UN: Keep Politics Out of Elian Case
HAVANA, 12 (AP) - United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata said Friday that politics should be kept out of the Elian Gonzalez case and indicated she thought the boy belonged with his father.
``I don't think that politics should play a role'' in the case of the 6-year-old boy at the heart of an international custody dispute, Ogata said. The child has been at the center of a tug-of-war between his father in Cuba and his relatives in Miami since he was rescued off Florida's coast in
late November.
``The fundamental consideration should be in the best interest of the child,'' Ogata told a news conference as she wound up a two-day visit to the communist island.
Cuba declared it would continue to fight for the return of Elian as it awaited the decision of a U.S. appellate court on a request by the boy's Miami relatives for a political asylum hearing for the child.
``Independent of what happens in Atlanta, our people will continue their battle,'' the Communist Party daily Granma said in a front page editorial.
Cuban officials have declined to speculate on how the judges will rule.
Ogata said that when she met with President Fidel Castro on Thursday in an effort to persuade him to join other countries across the hemisphere by signing a long-standing U.N. treaty on refugees.
The Cuban government ``is seriously considering signing the protocol... that is precisely one of the reasons why I am here,'' Ogata said.
During a speech at the University of Havana on Thursday, Ogata praised Cuba for its historical support of refugees from Haiti and Central and South America.
``Cuba has a very important tradition to grant asylum,'' Ogata told students. In doing so, she said, ``the Cubans have given the world a powerful message of solidarity and understanding.''
The issue of refugees has never been a key political issue here, with the exception of sporadic waves of Haitians arriving on the easternmost part of Cuba, near the island of Hispaniola.
Opponents of Fidel Castro's Communist government often use the term refugees to describe the thousands of people who leave Cuba illegally each year by sea.
But both Cuba and the U.S. Coast Guard, which is charged with repatriating seaborne Cubans to their homeland, describes the majority of those Cubans as illegal migrants who have left for economic reasons.
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