By Anita Snow, Associated Press Writer. Yahoo! March 7,
2001
HAVANA, 6 (AP) - Cuba's chief economic planner says his country wants to
trade with the United States but insisted the communist nation won't buy a
single aspirin until all U.S. sanctions are lifted unconditionally.
"If the blockade is lifted, yes, we will buy. Not only aspirin, but
many other products,'' Vice President Carlos Lage told The Associated Press on
Monday night in an exclusive interview. But Cuba will buy nothing, said Lage,
under the current "humiliating conditions.''
Lage's declaration came several days after the United States gave an
American shipping company permission to transport products for U.S. producers
under a new law allowing American food sales to Cuba for the first time in 40
years.
Havana has repeatedly said it would not buy U.S. products under the new law,
charging that financing restrictions make such sales nearly impossible.
Crowley Liner Services, of Jacksonville, Fla., received the U.S. Treasury
Department (news - web sites) license covering its 11-ship fleet last week.
The U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, a New York-based business
information group, has said that Crowley has lined up as many as 60 American
companies interested in shipping products to Cuba. Crowley has declined to
confirm that for competitive reasons.
Lage indicated that the shipping company and its potential clients were
wasting their time.
"If they want to come with a boat, let them come. We don't have any
problem with that,'' said Lage, one of Cuba's top four leaders. "We are not
going to prohibit it, but I don't know what merchandise they can bring because
we do not have any commercial operations with the United States.''
The new law approved last year bars the U.S. government and banks from
financing sales and shipments. That means all such sales must be made with cash
or financing through third countries.
The law also prevents the American president from easing restrictions on
travel to Cuba - a move that enraged communist officials keen on increasing U.S.
tourism.
The new administration of President Bush (news - web sites) supports
maintaining the nearly 40-year U.S. trade embargo on Cuba in an attempt to force
a change in Cuba's one-party government.
"The cost of the blockade is incalculably high for the Cuban economy
and that cost would disappear'' if the sanctions were lifted, Lage said.
"Imagine 2 million (American) tourists, for instance,'' he said. "Imagine
not having to bring products or a great amount of merchandise from Europe or
Asia because they can be brought from the United States.''
Lage, credited with helping keep Cuba afloat during a decade of economic
crisis, said that despite the sanctions his nation's economy has managed to grow
an average 4.7 percent annually since 1995.
"The greatest difficulties are behind us,'' Lage said, adding that Cuba
remains "in a very difficult economic situation.''
"If in these conditions the Cuban economy can advance, how much more
would it advance if these conditions did not exist,'' Lage said, referring to
U.S. sanctions in place since 1962.
If the embargo is lifted, '"I have no doubt that indisputably the
recovery process, the development and the growth would be much more
accelerated.''
Copyright © Yahoo!
Inc.
Copyright © 2000
The Associated Press. | 