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The Associated Press.
Herald Tribune, October 22, 2002.
Reaching out to its compatriots in exile, the government announced Monday it
would hold a conference next spring to bring together Cubans living on and off
the island.
The third "Nation and Emigration" conference sponsored by the
Cuban government will be held April 11-13 in Havana, said Foreign Ministry
spokeswoman Aymee Hernandez.
Cubans living off the island, and their descendants, will be invited to
attend, she said. It was unclear exactly how those exile participants would be
chosen, although Hernandez said they would have to "love Cuba, and defend
it as free, independent and sovereign."
Hernandez, reading a prepared statement to reporters, said that this was the
first conference of this type to include the sons, daughters and grandchildren
of Cuban exiles, along with the exiles themselves.
"For them, the conference will be an opportunity for new knowledge and
to forge tighter ties with Cuba," she said.
"They are also victims, as is our people, of the hostile policy that
for decades has prevented the normal relations of that community with their
relatives in our country," she said.
The ministry spokeswoman said the conference would focus "especially"
on Cuban-born people and their descendants in the United States, where most of
the 1.5 million Cuban exiles live.
Nearly 200 Cubans from abroad attended the first conference, held in 1994.
They included members of the government that Fidel Castro's guerrillas overthrew
in 1959, as well as longtime sympathizers with his socialism.
A second conference was held the following year, in 1995.
Hernandez said that travel to and from the island by Cubans seeking to be
reunited with family members has increased significantly since that first
conference.
More than 600,000 Cubans living abroad visited the island between 1994 and
2001, and dozens of Cubans living on the island traveled abroad during that same
seven-year period, she said. | 
