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October 31, 2002.
Cuba launches anti-embargo campaign two weeks before UN vote
AP/ Wed Oct 30, 1:09 PM ET
HAVANA - Saying Americans are also victims of the U.S. trade embargo against
Cuba, the communist country on Wednesday launched its annual campaign leading up
to next month's United Nations vote to condemn the trade sanctions.
"This is not a move against the United States," Foreign Minister
Felipe Perez Roque said at a news conference about Cuba's resolution calling for
an end to the embargo. "This is a move against a wrong-headed policy."
The foreign minister said Cuba did not blame Americans for their
government's policy against the island, in place for more four decades. "They
are also victims of this absurd policy," Perez Roque added.
The U.N. General Assembly is scheduled to vote Nov. 12 on the annual
resolution declaring the "necessity of ending the economic, commercial and
financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba."
In Cuba's report to the U.N. Secretary on the resolution, submitted on July
15, the government declares that the sanctions have caused more than $70 billion
in damages to the Caribbean country.
The sanctions were imposed in the early 1960s, after the 1959 revolution
that brought Fidel Castro to power.
"The policy of blockade has inflicted and continues to inflict serious
and onerous damages on the Cuban people's material, psychological and spiritual
welfare, while hindering its economic and social development," Cuba's
report says.
"The U.S. blockade has forced consecutive generations of Cubans to live
under a climate of permanent hostility and tension," it added.
For 10 years in a row, the U.N. General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly
for an end to the U.S. trade sanctions against Cuba. Last year, only the United
States, Israel and the Marshall Islands voted in favor of maintaining the
sanctions.
Local woman fined for going to Cuba
Wed Oct 30, 2:21 PM ET. KGTV TheSanDiegoChannel.com
A 74-year-old Hillcrest woman was fined $8,300 for violating the U.S. travel
ban to Cuba when she went on a bicycle trip to the communist country, it was
reported Wednesday.
Joan Slote, a retired medical worker who traveled to Cuba two years ago,
said she got bad advice from the trip's organizer and didn't seek special U.S.
permission to travel to the island country, which is subject to a U.S. trade
embargo.
"Had I known it was illegal I never would've done it," she told
the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Slote has repeatedly asked for a hearing, but instead, has only been sent
late notices from the U.S. Treasury Department (news - web sites), the newspaper
reported.
Rob Nichols, a Treasury Department spokesman, told the newspaper that he
couldn't comment on Slote's case, but said Americans "need to know that if
they go to Cuba illegally they risk being fined."
Slote told the newspaper that she didn't know much about Cuba when she
signed up for the trip with a friend, Amy Olsen, in late 1999.
The two never sought U.S. permission to go to Cuba because the trip's
Canadian organizer, Worldwide Adventures, told them in writing, "U.S. law
does not prohibit U.S. citizens from visiting Cuba, provided you are flying from
Canada or Mexico and not directly from a U.S. port," the newspaper
reported.
Slote and her friend flew to Toronto and then to Cuba, where they spent
eight days riding their bicycles, the newspaper reported.
On their return to San Diego on Jan. 15, 2000, Slote and Olsen were
confronted by a Customs inspector at Lindbergh Field, the newspaper reported.
The inspector took them into a secondary inspection, searched their bags and
reported them to the Treasury Department, the newspaper reported.
In May 2001, the Treasury Department sent Slote a notice telling her that
she had been fined $7,600 -- now $8,300 because of late-payment penalties -- for
spending money in Cuba, the newspaper reported.
Slote is fighting the the fine. | 
