By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Oct 21 1999 (IPS)

The first visit to Cuba by a U.S. governor in 40 years could precede a vote in the U.S. Congress to lift the ban on sales of food and medicine to this Caribbean island nation.

Cuban Foreign Ministry spokesman Alejandro González confirmed Thursday that Illinois Governor George Ryan would fly to Havana Saturday to meet with local authorities and visit spots of interest.

Ryan will be the first governor to visit Cuba since the 1959 triumph of the revolution headed by Fidel Castro triggered the ongoing tension between the two countries.

“I cannot specify the amount of humanitarian aid,” said González, referring to newspaper reports that during Ryan’s five- day stay in Cuba, he would deliver around one million dollars in aid.

The official declined to comment on whether or not President Fidel Castro would receive the delegation headed by Ryan. But local analysts said the meeting was basically a sure thing.

Castro puts high priority on visits by U.S. political, business, academic and church leaders, which have increased since Pope John Paul II’s January 1998 visit to the island.

Ryan is expected to meet not only government officials, but leaders of Cuba’s dissident movement as well.

He will be heading a delegation of 48 government officials, political and religious leaders, and representatives of the business and health sectors. Forty-seven reporters from 31 media organs will accompany, but not form part of, the group, González added.

The spokesman said the governor of the state of Illinois asked the Castro administration for an invitation to Cuba, which was extended by the Foreign Ministry.

Ryan’s visit could precede a vote in the U.S. Senate next week on whether food and medicine are to be excluded from the trade embargo Washington set in place against Cuba in 1961, reported the U.S. daily The New Herald.

If the vote takes place next week, it will be the second time in three months that the upper house of the U.S. Congress pronounces itself on issues concerning relations with Cuba.

The joint House-Senate committee preparing the U.S. farm budget bill decided last month to exclude an amendment submitted by Republican Senator John Aschcroft aimed at permitting sales of farm products to Cuba.

Lawmakers advocating a lifting of the ban on sales of foodstuff and medicines to Cuba argue that 38 years was long enough to demonstrate that a policy had failed, and point out that the embargo affects U.S. companies, which are shut out of a potential market.

Cuban-American legislators Lincoln Díaz Balart and Ileana Ross Lehtinen, however, are staunchly opposed to a lifting or easing of the embargo as long as Castro remains in power.

“It is clear that the blockade has a strong impact on food security in Cuba,” Martin Bourque, director of the Sustainable Agriculture Programme of the Oakland, California-based Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First), said Thursday.

On a visit to the island, Bourque presented to the Cuban press the books “World Hunger: 12 Myths” and “America Needs Human Rights”, published by Food First.

Representatives of the U.S. National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) and Methodist ministers from the United States were also in Cuba this week, exploring possibilities for exchanges between U.S. and Cuban universities.

NCHE secretary-general Roger Ireson told the press that the delegation he headed, which included the presidents of several U.S. universities, met for five hours with Castro Wednesday.

“Our commitment is to form generations of leaders for the next centry,” and among the aims of the Council is “laying the foundations for world peace and for a deep understanding between” our two countries, said Ireson.

In statements to IPS, the president of the Cuban parliament, Ricardo Alarcón, ruled out the possibility of a radical change in Washington’s Cuba policy before next year’s presidential elections in the United States.

Analysts see visits like Ryan’s as part of a process of detente between the two countries, which could help lead to a partial lifting of the embargo against the island. But they believe a complete removal of the blockade unlikely.

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