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Cuba Opens to American Food Sales
By Vivian Sequera, Associated Press Writer
HAVANA, 17 (AP) - Fidel Castro removed a major obstacle to the first
American food sales to Cuba in 40 years, saying Saturday that U.S. ships or
vessels from other countries can bring the goods to the communist island.
In a 41/2-hour speech that began late Friday night, Castro said he would
abandon his insistence that the food be shipped on Cuban vessels. The United
States had rejected that proposal.
Castro said the American products could be picked up by boats from other
countries - including the United States - and added that "we are pursuing
the rest of the paperwork for the purchases.''
Cuba's plans to buy American food are certain to please U.S. agricultural
firms, which have been lobbying the government here to make a symbolic purchase
under a U.S. law passed last year. The United States does not have diplomatic
relations with Cuba.
Congress approved food exports to Cuba in 2000, easing a trade embargo
imposed in 1961 - but watered down the measure by prohibiting the U.S. financing
of such transactions. Enraged by that restriction, Cuba said it would not buy
any food until sanctions were eased more.
Cuba softened that stance after it was hit hard by Hurricane Michelle. The
government declined a U.S. offer of humanitarian aid but proposed a one-time
cash purchase of American food and medicine in the wake of the storm, which
destroyed crops and destroyed homes on Nov. 4.
The purchase will allow Cuba "to immediately create new reserves'' of
emergency food and medicine for any future natural disasters, Castro said. He
said Cuba appreciates the U.S. aid offer and repeated his call for an easing of
the sanctions.
"We hope for a continual lessening of the obstacles that exist and that
one day the blockade will disappear,'' Castro said in his speech at a regional
trade forum.
Cuban officials have presented a list of goods for examination by U.S.
officials and also have been in contact with 15 agricultural companies and 15
firms that produce either pharmaceuticals or medical supplies.
Cuba's request to buy specific items still must obtain final licensing
approval from the U.S. government. Cuban officials have said they would pay for
the goods in cash.
Castro has not said exactly what Cuba wants to buy, how much it will cost or
when the U.S. products would be brought to Cuba. Cuba has said it would pay cash
for the goods, whose value has been estimated at $3 million to $10 million.
The U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, which monitors the trade situation
between the two countries, has said Cuba is seeking to purchase products such as
wheat, soy, flour, corn and rice, and possibly wood, baby food, powdered milk,
cooking oil, beans, antibiotics and vaccinations.
Cuban purchases of U.S. medical supplies have been legal since 1992.
Search Under Way For Missing Cuban Go-Fast Boat
Monday November 19 12:56 PM EST.
A massive Coast Guard search is under way in the Florida straits where 30
Cuban migrants are believed to be missing.
Family members say a go-fast boat left Cuba on Friday and was expected to
reach South Florida by Saturday, but it did not.
The Coast Guard is using two C-130 planes, a cutter and a helicopter to
search for the group.
Brothers to the Rescue pilots are also helping with the search.
Ex-CIA agent pitches Cuba as cure
By Paisley Dodds, Associated Press Writer
HAVANA, 18 (AP) - "Stressed Out from the World Crisis?'' says the Web
page, under a picture of an idyllic beach. "Need Relief from Everyday
Anxieties? Give Yourself a Break in Cuba, the Safest Country in the World.''
Philip Agee, CIA (news - web sites) agent-turned travel promoter, is
capitalizing on post-Sept. 11 jitters to lure American tourists to Cuba.
Other travel agencies specializing in U.S. travel to Cuba have also promoted
the island's safety record, but few go as far as to sell it as a refuge from
terrorism.
"When I first thought of this promotion I was worried that people might
think I was exploiting people's fears,'' Agee said. "But then I thought,
this is exactly what Americans need now.''
Agee became famous for his 1975 tell-all book about his years with the CIA,
an expose that cost him his passport and eventually landed him in Cuba where he
launched his travel agency last year.
He's 66 now, a small, soft-spoken native of Tampa, Fla. He runs his business
out of a fourth-floor apartment in Havana's palm-fringed Vedado neighborhood.
The elevator is often broken and his office is sparse, with only a few pieces of
basic furniture.
On the wall is a picture of Agee with Cuba's leader, Fidel Castro (news -
web sites).
On the site, www.cubalinda.com, tourists can book weekend getaway trips to
Havana starting at $150 plus airfare. Camper vans and cell phones can be rented.
Agee wears his political colors up front. His goal, the Web site says, is "To
continue solidarity activities with the revolution by presenting Cuban realities
to the world on-line,'' and "help to correct the many years of lies and
distortions fomented by the U.S. government.''
Besides architecture, music, beaches and rich culture, Cuba enjoys an
obvious buffer from foreign attacks on Americans; crimes against foreigners are
rare, and Americans on the island even rarer.
But Cuba is under U.S. economic embargo, and Agee's challenge is to convince
Americans to buck a U.S. law that prohibits them from spending money in Cuba
except in special circumstances.
Violators can be fined up to $55,000, but Agee says the U.S. government
seldom follows through. President Bush (news - web sites) has said he will move
to enforce the rules more strictly, but at the same time moves are afoot in
Congress to ease the ban. Repeated calls to the Treasury's Office of Foreign
Assets Control for comment were not returned.
The New York-based U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council estimates 173,000
Americans visited Cuba last year, including 22,000 in defiance of the travel
ban.
Agee quit the CIA in 1969 after 12 years, working mostly in Latin America
during the years that leftist movements were gaining prominence.
His book, "Inside the Company: CIA Diary'' cited alleged CIA misdeeds
against leftists in Latin America and included a 22-page list of purported
agency operatives.
His travel agency is commercial, "but getting Americans to Cuba is also
political,'' he said. "A long time ago I was in the business of telling
lies for the CIA. Today, I'm trying to dispel some of those lies.''
Agee's American passport was revoked in 1979 after he was ruled a threat to
U.S. national security. He entered Cuba on a German travel document.
He still keeps an apartment in Germany with his wife but has been living
mainly in Cuba for the last three years. Because of a housing shortage, he
sleeps in his office.
The Cuban government requires him to have state-operated Cubatur as a
partner. Through Cubatour he pays his 13 employees a total of about $3,000 a
month.
He says he has yet to turn a profit. Things were looking hopeful, "but
then Sept. 11 happened,'' he said. "This year we've arranged trips for 400
people to Cuba this year, most of whom were Americans. We were on our way to
having 600.''
Some have canceled trips while others have postponed.
"We didn't come here necessarily to get away from concerns over
bioterrorism, but we definitely feel safer in Cuba than we would in our own
town,'' said Gordon Fulton, an attorney from Berkeley, Calif., who obtained U.S.
permission for a visit and arranged his trip independently. "We didn't want
to cancel.''
As for why tourists should feel safer in Cuba than, say, Canada, Agee says: "Cuba's
a heck of lot more fun than Canada is.''
On the Net:
http://www.treas.gov/ofac/cubapage.html
Cuba Ready for Normal US Relations
By Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press Writer
UNITED NATIONS, 16 (AP) - Cuba is ready for normal relations with the United
States "on the basis of respect and noninterference in the domestic affairs
of each country,'' Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said Friday.
But normal relations depend on whether President George W. Bush (news - web
sites) "can dare to challenge the insolence and the power of the extremist
groups based in Miami ... which are dictating their interests to control U.S.
foreign policy as far as Cuba is concerned,'' he told a news conference.
Cuba has been under a U.S. trade embargo since shortly after Fidel Castro
(news - web sites) defeated the CIA (news - web sites)-backed invasion at the
Bay of Pigs in 1961. His communist nation, just 90 miles from Miami, has
continued to vex subsequent U.S. administrations.
In an interview Thursday with The Associated Press, Perez Roque said a U.S.
offer of assistance after Hurricane Michelle devastated the island last month
was "a positive signal,'' and Cuba hoped the offer heralded a change in
policy by the Bush administration.
"Today there is an administration in the United States which can
outline its own policy towards Cuba according to the interests of the American
people, business people and farmers,'' he told the news conference at Cuba's
U.N. Mission.
Perez Roque maintains that while American public opinion supports lifting
the trade embargo, U.S. policy toward Cuba has been "held hostage'' by a
minority of Cuban-Americans opposed to lifting the trade restrictions. Bush has
previously vowed not to ease the trade ban.
Asked in the AP interview what Cuba would consider a positive, follow-up
action by the Bush administration, he replied: "To allow Americans to
travel freely to Cuba.'' Unless granted waivers, U.S. citizens are banned from
Cuban travel.
Even though Cuba has suffered under the U.S. embargo, Perez Roque said, its
people have "no grudges or ill-feelings'' toward Americans.
"I believe that normal relations between Cuba and the United States,
for which Cuba is ready on the basis of respect and non-interference in the
domestic affairs of each country ... do not depend on hurricanes,'' he told the
news conference.
There have been no political discussions between the two countries since
1982. As the price for normal relations, the United States demands that Castro
replace his communist system with democracy.
Perez Roque said although Cuba turned down the offer of U.S. aid after the
hurricane, it has opened talks with the United States for a one-time cash
purchase of food and medicine to replenish stocks depleted by the storm.
"I believe in a matter of days we could have an agreement,'' he said
Friday. "I do not see any obstacles.''
Creating a small opening in the trade embargo, the U.S. Congress last year
legalized sales of food to the communist island for the first time since 1961.
The Cuban government vowed not to buy "a single gram'' of American food
unless Washington did more to loosen or do away with the trade restrictions.
But Castro made an exception because of the devastation of Hurricane
Michelle, which destroyed hundreds of thousands of houses and vast tracts of
farmland. Perez Roque called it the worst hurricane to hit Cuba in half a
century, saying it devastated the country's banana plantations and badly damaged
the citrus and sugar crops.
Group Applauds U.S. and Cuban Government 'Flexibility' in Forging
Historic Agreement for Special Food and Medical Sales
Monday November 19, 10:28 am Eastern Time. Press Release.
SOURCE: Americans For Humanitarian Trade with Cuba
NEW YORK, Nov. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Americans For Humanitarian Trade with Cuba
(AHTC), a national coalition of prominent Americans including David Rockefeller,
former U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills, former U.S. Federal Reserve
Chairman Paul Volcker, former U.S. Surgeon General Julius Richmond and others,
applauded the flexibility of both the U.S. and Cuban governments in forging a
historic agreement for Cuba to purchase food from the U.S. in the wake of
Hurricane Michele.
"Working with the Cuban government is the best way to achieve our
mutual goal of getting supplies to the people who need them without delay,''
Craig L. Fuller, AHTC Co-Chair and Former Chief of Staff to former Vice
President George Bush said. "The agreement marks a good first step in
opening dialogue between our two countries and will be regarded favorably by the
majority of Americans, members of Congress and especially the international
community, all of whom support normal commercial relations between the U.S. and
Cuba in the area of humanitarian trade.''
U.S. government and industry officials said Cuba has requested U.S. food
products including chicken, rice, wheat, soybeans, lumber and pork lard. U.S.
sources estimate the value of the food sales in the range of $3 million to $50
million. Officials on both sides stress that no actual purchases have yet been
accomplished, but remain hopeful that the two government's dialogue will soon
lead to real sales.
"This request by the Government of Cuba puts to rest unfounded
arguments that Cuba does not really want to buy from the U.S. and that Cuba has
no money to buy,'' said AHTC member, Kirby Jones, President of Alamar
Associates, a Cuba trade consulting firm, who was last week in Cuba where he
spoke with several of the Cuban officials involved. "It is clear that Cuba
is appreciative of the Bush Administration's offer and is prepared to be
flexible and move quickly to buy those items it needs now.''
Congressional sources indicate that legislation to go even farther and grant
the President the authority to suspend licensing and allow government and
private financing during this crisis will soon be introduced. Last year a law
which allowed cash sales to Cuba was passed, but disappointed U.S. farm and
humanitarian groups who realize that normal financing is the key to sales to
Cuba, just as it is to other countries. The Senate Agricultural Committee on
November 7 voted to allow private financing for food and medical sales to Cuba
as part of the Agricultural Authorization bill. The House last year voted 3 to 1
to completely eliminate enforcement of the U.S. food and medicine embargo on
Cuba.
"It is only a matter of time before the bipartisan coalition in
Congress secures normal commercial trade of humanitarian products between the
U.S. and Cuba. People on both sides who need these sales have waited too long
already,'' Lissa Weinmann, Executive Director of AHTC said.
AHTC was formed in January 1998 with the sole focus of ending the U.S.
unilateral food and medical embargo on Cuba as a matter of U.S. national
interest. The coalition has grown to include 28 State Councils representing
religious, agricultural, labor, business, medical, entertainment, Cuban American
and former government leaders. For a full membership roster and other
information about the group, visit the AHTC website at:
http://www.ahtc.org. | 
