The Great Lakes Zephyr - Wind Energy & Hydrogen Journal

Another from the ever-popular ENN,

Thursday, October 09, 2003
By Anthony Boadle, Reuters


HAVANA — The Indiana Farm Bureau signed a commitment to work for the repeal of trade and travel sanctions against Communist-run Cuba Wednesday in return for a Cuban pledge to buy $15 million in agricultural products.

Cuban officials said they have spent $512 million on food imports from 35 U.S. states in two years after a four-decade-old trade embargo against President Fidel Castro's government was relaxed by the U.S. Congress.

Indiana Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh, heading a agricultural and business delegation to Havana, said trading with Cuba was the best way to promote "positive change" on the Caribbean island, the hemisphere's only Communist state.

Efforts to abolish the Cold War sanctions against Cuba has run into stiff opposition in the Bush administration, which has threatened to veto any steps to ease the embargo until Castro allows democratic reforms.

The momentum in the United States to end the embargo lost steam this year after Castro ordered a harsh crackdown on 75 dissidents.

Bayh on Tuesday visited Cuba's leading dissident Oswaldo Paya, who heads a signature campaign calling for moderate reforms to the one-party state, and praised his "courageous" work.

Bayh defended trade with Cuba as the best way to facilitate progress and freedom for Cubans, dismissing the White House...(Read on in: Indiana farmers pledge to oppose Cuba embargo)