Chronicle on Cuba - April 2004

US-Cuba Relations

April 1: The second of three Cuban rafters who arrived near Lauderdale-by-the-Sea was discharged from Holy Cross Hospital. US Border Patrol agents picked up William Villavicencio Pérez, 31, of Cuba's Arroyo Naranjo neighborhood, at the Fort Lauderdale hospital, spokeswoman Christine Moncrieffe said. (The Miami Herald, 2/4/04)

April 2: Venezuela's ties to Cuba entered the US presidential campaign as Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee, said Chavez's "close relationship with Fidel Castro has raised serious questions about his commitment to leading a truly democratic government." The comment was part of a broader attack that President Bush was not doing enough to support democracy in the region. (Chicago Tribune, 2/4/04)

April 3: A flying team of eye surgeons ended its fifth trip to Cuba, leaving behind -- as it does elsewhere -- medical expertise for host doctors and patients treated free of charge. Orbis and its 42-member team of physicians recently wrapped up a four-week program in Havana and eastern Manzanillo, treating patients for everything from cataracts to glaucoma. Surgeries took place on the plane and at nearby hospitals, in an effort coordinated with Cuba's Ministry of Public Health. (The Miami Herald, 3/4/04)

April 4: A core group of GOP lawmakers in Tallahassee apparently believes Florida needs its own anti-terrorism foreign policy. And they are supporting HB 1193, the "Commerce with Terrorist States Act." The bill would levy a surcharge on direct flights from Florida airports to countries on the State Department's terrorist nations list, including Iran and Libya. It would also require university and other groups making such a trip to file detailed itineraries 50 days before departure. There are no such flights from Florida to countries like North Korea or Libya, so this bill applies only to Cuba. (Sun Sentinel, 4/4/04)

April 5: The recent call for the assassination of Fidel Castro by a US congressman on American television should receive a suitable response from US Congress and judicial system, a Cuban weekly asserted. "Trabajadores", a Cuban union daily, expressed outrage that a person in this respected position could take advantage of congressional immunity to make statements considered criminal in any other setting. Representative Lincoln Diaz Balart said in an interview on Miami´s Channel 41 that he thought Fidel Castro should be assassinated and that US agents should infiltrate and disrupt the island posing as tourists. (Radio Habana Cuba, 5/4/04)

April 5: US publishers would be free to edit scholarly manuscripts from Iran and some other off-limit countries without fear of running afoul of economic sanctions, the Bush administration has determined. The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which enforces US trade embargoes against certain countries, came to that conclusion in a case involving the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a professional group that is a big publisher of scholarly materials in electrical and electronics engineering and computer sciences. OFAC's decision "makes clear that scientific communities in sanctioned countries may publish their works in US scholarly journals," OFAC Director Richard Newcomb said in a statement. (AP, 5/4/04)

April 5: Nicaragua, El Salvador and Peru intend to support a US-prompted Honduran draft resolution condemning Cuba's human rights policy before the UN Human Rights Commission. High-ranking State Department officials called a press conference to announce the development and explain Washington's position toward the Commission's session this month in Geneva. Kim Holmes, assistant secretary of the State Department's Bureau of International Organization Affairs, said the wording of the resolution to be presented April 15-16 "is stronger than last year's." The United States and some other countries want stronger language this year in light of last year's sentencing and imprisonment of more than 70 Cuban dissidents. Holmes said he was optimistic the text drawn up by Honduras will receive wide endorsement and predicted that the majority of Latin American nations will vote to upbraid Havana. (EFE, 5/4/04)

April 6: For complete normalization of Cuba-US relations Washington must recognize Cuba as an independent country, and permitting its citizens to visit would be a significant step in the right direction, the President of the Cuban Parliament Ricardo Alarcon told US press in Havana. Speaking to an editorial board of the Associated Press Managing Editors, led by its vice president Stuart Wilk (Dallas Morning News), Alarcon discussed how such people-to-people visits would offset the military threat the US administration represents for the Caribbean country. (Prensa Latina, 6/4/04)

April 6: A group of ten Cuban rafters who were thought adrift may have been detained by the Coast Guard Service. According to some information, the group left off Santa Fe beach, west of Havana, on a wooden boat with a diesel engine. (El Nuevo Herald, 6/4/04)

April 6: A Cuban rafter who swam to shore along with two other men accused of attacking US Coast Guard officers testified that the guardsmen were the aggressors, using pepper spray and pointing a gun at the migrants. Alfredo Morales, who is not facing charges, was a witness in federal court for the defendants - his brother, Javier Morales Molina, and cousin, Reinaldo Molina Morales. The two men stand accused of attacking Coast Guard officers who tried to intercept their vessel at sea on May 6, 2003, during their bid to reach the Florida coast. Morales said the Coast Guard agents fired pepper spray when the Cubans refused to lower the sail of the wooden raft they used to flee the communist island. (EFE, 6/4/04)

April 7: Vermont Lieutenant Governor Brian Dubie is expected to announce an upcoming state trip to Cuba. Dubie says the goals of the trip are to help establish a relationship between the people of Vermont and the people of Cuba and pursue opportunities to export Vermont products to the country. (AP, 7/4/04)

April 8: Two Cuban migrants were acquitted of charges they threatened US Coast Guard officers with weapons as they tried to reach the US shore last year. A jury deliberated for three hours before clearing Javier Morales Molina, 27, and his cousin, Reinaldo Molina Morales, 30, of two counts of assaulting federal officers. The accused were two of three migrants whose evasion of a Coast Guard vessel and two-mile swim from their disabled homemade boat to the mangrove-thick shores of northern Key Largo was televised live last May. (Sun Sentinel, 8/4/04)

April 8: Cuba took its turn at the podium of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva to accuse the United States of encouraging and promoting the illegal emigration of Cuban citizens. By way of the Cuban Adjustment Act, citizens of the Caribbean Island are privileged with US residency if they are able to reach its territory, independent of how they get there. Many of those that don´t make it have perished at sea. Cuban diplomat Jorge Ferrer reminded the UN commission that a very different welcoming exists for other undocumented immigrants, citing the 900,000 Mexicans detained annually in US border areas. (Prensa Latina, 8/4/04)

April 9: HBO will broadcast on prime time a documentary on Cuban leader Fidel Castro directed by US filmmaker Oliver Stone, who made an earlier portrait of the aging strongman that was pulled by the cable network. "Looking for Fidel" includes interviews with the Cuban president, who has ruled for 45 years, as well as with jailed dissidents and relatives of political opponents and human rights activists. (EFE, 9/4/04)

April 8: The relatives of five Cubans imprisoned in the US gave their testimonies at the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC). During a seminar to condemn the human right transgressions against the five Cubans, Magali Llort, Adriana Pérez O´Connor and Olga Salanueva also strongly denounced the US hostility on Cuba. Havana"s Permanent Ambassador to the UNHRC Jorge Ivan Mora Godoy stressed that the visit of Magali, Adriana and Olga allows opening new opportunities for the understanding and solidarity with the Cuban Five. (Prensa Latina, 8/4/04)

April 9: A two-month US tour by the 15-piece Cuban jazz-pop band “Cubanismo” has been canceled because its members were denied visas to enter the US. The group's 43-show, 34-city itinerary included a stop in Los Angeles. “Cubanismo”, made up of musicians from various Cuban bands, has played in the US several times over the last decade. (Los Angeles Times, 9/4/04)

April 10: The Cuban Olympic Committee (COC) decried the denial by the US government of a visa for one of its directors to travel to San Antonio, Texas where he is supposed to participate as a delegate in the General Assembly of the Pan-American Sport Organization (ODEPA). (Prensa Latina, 10/4/04)

April 11: A new investigation into a former head of the Bacardí dynasty that acquired vast fortunes from the rum has levelled fresh allegations involving links to international terrorists, assassination attempts and a plot to overthrow Fidel Castro's communist regime. Claims, to be screened on BBC3, hint at the murky past of a key member of the family who tried to depose Castro throughout the 1960s. They detail how the late Pepin Bosch, former head of Bacardí, acquired a bomber in a plot to blow up a Cuban oil refinery. A successful attack, he hoped, would leave large parts of Havana without electricity, triggering a popular uprising that would topple Castro. (The Guardian, 11/4/04)

April 11: Fifty-seven Cubans landed on the South Florida coast on Easter Sunday in four different vessels, informed the Coast Guard. The first boat, carrying 32 people, landed in the Marquesas islands near Key West. Another group of five arrived in Miami Beach while two other groups landed on two different points along the Florida coast. (El Nuevo Herald, 11/4/04)

April 12: Farm leaders say Cuba wants to buy at least $10 million of agricultural products from South Dakota. Making that happen will take persistence and patience, said Gary Duffy, president of the South Dakota Value-Added Agricultural Center. Agricultural and business leaders met in Huron recently after a trade mission to the Caribbean nation. Duffy said he hopes South Dakota farm products will be on their way to Cuba within a year. (AP, 12/4/04)

April 12: Vermont Lieutenant Governor Brian Dubie is expected to announce an upcoming state trip to Cuba. Dubie says the goals of the trip are to help establish a relationship between the people of Vermont and the people of Cuba and pursue opportunities to export Vermont products to the country. (AP, 12/4/04)

April 13: Moving to cement trade ties with US business, Cuba agreed to buy $13 million in food from American companies and reached a tentative deal for up to $10 million in farm goods from California. Hundreds of US farm representatives hoping to build a trade relationship with communist Cuba traveled to Havana for three days of talks organized by Cuba. Cuban said that by the time talks end they hope to contract to buy as much as $100 million more in American farm products. More than 300 people from about 150 U.S. companies attended the gathering. The biggest contract announced was with Archer Daniels Midland of Decatur, Ill., for $9 million in corn. The other contracts were for $3.4 million in rice from Riceland Foods Inc. of Stuttgart, Ark., and nearly $1 million for peas from PS International Ltd., of Chapel Hill, N.C. "Cuba was the No. 1 market for American rice prior to sanctions," said USA Rice Federation representative Marvin Leherer. Mexico is now the world's No. 1 importer of American rice, buying about 750,000 metric tons annually, said Leherer. (AP, 13/4/04)

April 13:US President Bush and Mexican President Vicente Fox held a phone conversation on Cuba. The seven-minute conversation between Bush and Vicente Fox apparently gave rise to differences in interpretation by the two sides. In Washington, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the presidents discussed the meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Commission now under way in Geneva. "They agreed on the importance of passing a Cuba resolution at that meeting and working together to improve the human rights situation," McClellan said. But Agustin Gutierrez Canet, Fox's spokesman, said the White House version "does not coincide with Mexico's position, because Mexico has not made any decision on how it will vote on the proposed resolution." (AP, 13/4/04)

April 13: A US Coast Guard officer told the press that seven Cubans intercepted at sea have been returned to the island. The immigrants were detected in two groups trying to reach the US coasts. (AFP, 13/4/04)

April 13: Forty-five Cuban migrants were returned to the Caribbean island, including six who were apparently being smuggled to the United States, the US Coast Guard said. The Coast Guard sent nine people to Bahía de Cabañas, Cuba, in a first group and 36 more in a second group, according to a news release. (Sun Sentinel, 13/4/04)

April 14: Joining the bandwagon of trade with Cuba, Philadelphia port and state agriculture officials are scheduled to fly to Havana to sign commitments for up to $10 million in exports to Cuba. The signings would make Philadelphia the only port, and Pennsylvania the only Northeastern state, with limited commerce with the government of Fidel Castro, the officials said. (The Inquirer, 15/4/04)

April 14: "To support its political interests, the Cuban government is looking for a way to manipulate the political process in the United States through purchases," James Cason said in a communique released in this capital. Cason's statement coincided with the first round of negotiations between Cuba and the United States concerning food purchases, which is taking place here this week with some 400 representatives of more than 170 US companies interested in trade with the island attending. (EFE, 14/4/04)

April 15: Cuba opened its petroleum sector to US investment at a bilateral meeting with US businessmen in Havana. Officials from Cubapetroleo (CUPET) and the Foreign Investment and Economic Cooperation Ministry presented to the participants at the 1st Round of Cuban-US Food Negotiations the characteristics of the island's petroleum industry and the possibilities for investment in Cuba.  "We are open to US oil companies interested in exploration, production and services," Juan Fleites Melo, vice president of state oil monopoly Cubapetroleo, told the US companies' representatives. His invitation came on the third day of a four-day event during which $65 million in food sales agreements have been signed. CUPET vice president Juan Fleites explained that currently the island has 16 contracts with European and Canadian firms in the oil sector. "There is no reason US companies shouldn't take advantage and compete so close to home," he added. (EFE, Reuters, 15/4/04)

April 15: Central Bank President Francisco Soberon told the US representatives of 173 companies, who gathered in Havana to sell agricultural products, that "the United States would have less than 90 miles away the world's second-largest nickel reserve," if the embargo were lifted. He said ports and airports would open to US companies and trade would boom. Cuba is one of the world's largest producers of nickel plus cobalt at 71,600 tonnes last year. Nickel is used to make stainless steel and alloys for construction and industrial uses. Nickel oxide and cobalt oxide are used in the manufacturing of lithium batteries. (Reuters, 15/4/04)

April 16: The Cuban government has agreed to buy more than $100m worth of American food and agricultural produce. The sales come after a week of talks with US business representatives in Havana. Food sales have been permitted since 2000 under an exception to the four-decades-old US trade embargo on Cuba. (BBC, 16/4/04)

April 16: Democrat John Kerry, making his third tour of Florida in seven weeks since clinching his party's presidential nomination, will begin with a one-hour appearance on NBC's Meet the Press broadcasting from Miami, followed by a rally at the University of Miami. Kerry will be host at a town hall meeting at the Palm Beach Community College campus in Lake Worth. He heads to Tampa, later. As part of a three-day Florida swing, Kerry will campaign with U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, the Democrats' 2000 candidate for vice president, in Palm Beach County, home of the "butterfly ballots" that became enmeshed in court battles over Florida's presidential vote. U.S. Sen. Bob Graham of Florida will accompany Kerry throughout the tour. (Sun Sentinel, 16/4/04)

April 16:US Congressman Clement Leroy Otter (Republican-Idaho) met with Fidel Castro for the third time and said he was very satisfied with the Cuban leader´s awareness of the problems of Cuba and the world. Lawmaker Otter, leading the US business delegation to this year´s first bilateral negotiations, fully agreed with Fidel Castro´s remarks on the need to peacefully work together to solve the problems of humanity. We have the talent, technology, and ability, we only need to build the willingness to do it, Otter declared. The congressman was equally enthusiastic about an artistic function offered to the visitors at the Hotel Nacional, and said he was certain Cuban ballet and music would be well received by the US market if there were no economic blockade. (Prensa Latina, 16/4/04)

April 16: The United States says its representatives at the U.N. Commission on Human Rights and other participants in the meeting currently under way in Geneva have been subjected to "acts of intimidation, threat and aggression" by members of the Cuban delegation. Ambassador Richard Williamson, the US representative to the commission, described three incidents in which members of his delegation were directly threatened by members of the Cuban delegation. In a statement to the commission April 16, Richardson recounted how a US delegate was warned by a Cuban diplomat that he would "pay a high toll" for what he was doing at the commission. Williamson also cited the attack against the representative of an American nongovernmental organization that took place outside the commission meeting hall just after the body adopted a resolution criticizing Cuba's human rights record. Ambassador Kevin Moley, the US permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva, witnessed the attack on human rights activist Frank Calzon and described the assault as unprovoked and "full of malice." (US State Department Press Release, 16/4/04)

April 18: Democratic candidate John Kerry has not announced any major new plans or initiatives that he would implement if elected to speed up a Democratic transition in Cuba. Kerry spokesman Mark Kornblau said Kerry is not planning any Cuba policy announcements during his visit to Florida, but plans to roll out a Cuba initiative in the future. ''You can stick with the failed policies or try to find a better approach, and that's what John Kerry will do,'' Kornblau said. ''We are tired,'' said Republican Hialeah Councilman Esteban Bovo, who wrote a warning letter to Bush last year that was signed by dozens of local Republican leaders. ''We've listened to enough rhetoric from politicians looking for votes. We know Castro is evil, that he is a dictator, that he violates human rights. We need to know what they are going to do about it.'' (The Miami Herald, 18/4/04)

April 18: Democratic candidate, Senator John Kerry, denied having suggested that the US embargo against Cuba should be lifted. During the TV Program “Meet the Press”, Kerry said that in 20 years he has been in the Senate has never been in favor of ending the embargo. Kerry said that he has noticed a change in the Cuban American community in Florida, and he is in favor of promoting travels by US citizens to the island, as well as sending remittances by Cuban Americans to their relatives in Cuba. (Radio Martí, 19/4/04)

April 19: Daniel Benitez may well become a figure in US legal history when the Supreme Court rules on his case this year. Benitez, a former Miami resident, is one of two cases the high court will review in October to decide whether immigration authorities can detain foreign nationals indefinitely, including Cuban Mariel inmates whose government refuses to take them back. Benitez, 46, sums up his predicament simply. ''Let me go free or send me back to Cuba,'' he said in a recent interview at a federal prison near Denver. Benitez argued in his October petition to the Supreme Court that there is no valid reason to keep him in detention because he has served his sentence and the high court itself has ruled against indefinite detention. Though the Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that foreign nationals cannot be detained indefinitely, it did not resolve the question of whether Mariel detainees like Benitez can go free. (The Miami Herald, 18/4/04)

April 19: Pennsylvania, the first northeastern US state to send a trade mission to Cuba, pledged to lobby for an end to trade and travel sanctions against the communist-run island. The Port of Philadelphia, once the second largest importer of Cuban sugar, signed a memorandum of understanding to reopen its docks to trade with Cuba under an easing of sanctions in 2000 that allowed food sales to the island. “We intend to talk to our congressional delegation (in Washington) and encourage them to consider lifting the trade and travel restrictions," said Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff, heading an 18-member business delegation to Cuba. Wolff said Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell was "very much in favor" of restoring two-way trade and free travel to Cuba. (Reuters, 19/4/04)

April 20: A handful of protesters shouted, carried signs and hoisted US, UN and Cuban flags in support of six Cuban hijackers facing sentencing for hijacking a Havana-bound airliner to Key West. The hearing was to decide punishment in the first of a spate of plane and boat hijackings that aggravated US-Cuba relations a year ago. Defense attorney Stewart Abrams argued in court for the mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years for "escaping the political and economic repression of a communist government." Prosecutors argued for the maximum life sentences for a crime that they said endangered 37 people flying on the DC-3. (CNN, 21/4/04)

April 20: A retired couple from Strafford is facing $55,000 US in fines for trips to Cuba they made while writing a travel book for bicyclists. Wally and Barbara Smith travelled to Cuba four times - once for a vacation, and the next three to do research for Bicycling Cuba, a book that came out in November 2002. In doing so, they violated US sanctions that prohibit most US citizens from spending money in Cuba. Now the Smiths could pay a $55,000 fine, although they plan to contest that at hearings in Washington. Meanwhile, they're at work on another cycling book - this one about eastern Canada. (Canadian Press, 20/4/04)

April 21: Alabama's poultry industry has resumed sales to Cuba that were interrupted by the island nation's concerns about avian influenza. State Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks said that poultry sales to Cuba from Alabama resumed April 14 -- a day after Sparks visited Havana on his third trip to Cuba negotiating sales of agriculture products. (AP, 21/4/04)

April 21: Six Cubans were sentenced to at least 20 years in prison for hijacking an airliner from Cuba to Florida. The hijacking was the first in a series of air and sea hijackings that raised tensions between the United States and Cuba. The six men were accused of using five knives and a cockpit ax to commandeer the Cuban airliner during a domestic flight. The DC-3 with 37 people aboard landed in Key West with a US fighter escort. The men insisted it was a flight to freedom, with secret inside help from the co-pilot. But the jury rejected the claim in December. (CNN, 22/4/04)

April 21: The Havana Film Festival, sponsored by The New York Times, is exhibiting the work of Cuban filmmakers. Fernando Pérez, Cuban film director attending this cultural event as a special guest, will present his films “Madagascar”, “Hello Hemingway”, and “Suite Havana”, awarded in the last Latin American Film Festival in Havana. The New York Times Festival is also the scenario for the debut of some young filmmakers, like Miguel Coyula who is presenting his first film, “Red Cockroaches”, subtitled in Spanish. Coyula, 27, is presenting a film about an incestuous love between a brother and a sister who meet in a subway and fall in love. The story takes place in a high-polluted city with acid rain, flying vehicles and full of red cockroaches. Coyula is currently living in New York. (AP, 22/4/04)

April 21: A philanthropist best known for selling millions of dollars worth of musical instruments at a discount to the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra has fled to Cuba to avoid tax fraud charges, authorities said. A federal judge issued an arrest warrant for animal publishing tycoon Herbert Axelrod after he failed to show up for an arraignment on charges that he hid income from the Internal Revenue Service. Assistant US Attorney Michael Guadagno said Axelrod's yacht was docked in Cuba and that the multimillionaire was staying at the Marina Hemingway, a four-star resort in Havana. The United States has no extradition treaty with Cuba. (AP, 21/4/04)

April 22: Cuba's foreign minister denied knowing anything about an American multimillionaire who reportedly fled here to avoid tax fraud charges, but said the island is not a haven for those fleeing justice. "Cuba has never been a refuge for those fleeing justice," Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told international journalists. (AP, 22/4/04)

April 23: Ecology, Cuba’s freedom and a commitment with democracy in Iraq were the messages that George Bush gave in South Florida. “We believe in freedom, not only in Iraq but in our neighborhood. In only have two words for my foreign policy towards Cuba: Free Cuba”, said Bush. Referring to Fidel castro, Bush added: “We will maintain our pressure on the dictator”. “I want the Cuban people to listen this message loud and clear: we will not make concessions to tyranny; we believe in freedom; and we will insist on respect for human rights, in the human rights given by God”, the president added. (El Nuevo Herald, 24/4/04)

April 23: The Bush administration is considering making significant cuts in the amount of money Americans are allowed to send to family and others in Cuba, according to sources familiar with the discussions of the president's Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba. One proposal under review would temporarily freeze all remittances -- possibly for six months -- after which the administration would reinstate them at much lower levels than currently allowed. (Sun Sentinel, 23/4/04)

April 24: Looking for Fidel - a documentary by Oliver Stone about Fidel Castro-- has been panned by his critics for not being objective. Lending his voice to the criticism was the top US diplomat in Havana, James Cason, who felt that Justifying Fidel ought to have been a more appropriate title for the documentary. The diplomat said the message of Stone's film was that repression was justified in Cuba because the Bush administration was planning to invade the island. "It’s the conspiracy theory that Stone has always had in his films," Cason said. (AlJazeera.Net, 24/4/04)

April 25: Cuba welcomed prison terms of at least 20 years handed down in Miami to six Cubans convicted of hijacking an airliner from the island to Florida. In a short statement published in the Communist Party daily newspaper Granma, Cuba's foreign minister said the sentences given were "a positive act that contributes to the struggle against the commission of violent acts during emigration attempts.'' The communiqué reiterated Cuba's stated commitment to honor 1994 and 1995 accords with the United States aimed at promoting safe, orderly migration between the countries. [Official Statement] (The Miami Herald, 25/4/04)

April 27: In an interview with the Communist Party daily Granma, Pedro Ross Leal criticized the United States for meddling in Cuban affairs by creating its own plan for the island's conversion to democracy "such as that installed in Iraq." "The principal motivation of the patriotic and forcible demonstration by our people this coming May 1 will be to answer to the Yankees that there will be a transition to more and better socialism," said Ross Leal, the head of the Confederation of Cuban Workers. (CNN, 27/4/04)

April 28: Cuba repeated that it will defend its sovereignty and independence adopting every measure at hand to repel US electronic warfare. Cuban diplomat, Rodney Lopez, addressed the UN Information Committee to denounce over 310 hours of illegal radio and TV broadcasts “calling for violence and terrorist actions” made by at least 15 organizations linked to, or sponsors of, renowned terrorists that live and operate in the US with government consent. Lopez cited as an example "the poorly-named Radio and TV Marti, to which the US government allocates annual budgets of $35 million in its electronic war against Cuba that encourages illegal emigration, incites violence and terrorist actions, and calls to violate the law”. (Prensa Latina, 28/4/04)

April 30: As election season heats up in vote-rich South Florida, the Bush administration is studying controversial recommendations to slash cash remittances sent by Cuban-American exiles to their relatives in Cuba. One proposal would temporarily suspend all remittances for up to six months, while another seeks to cut in half the amount that can be legally sent, according to the unattributed reports. "The administration is going to look at everything," said former National Security Council official Emilio Gonzalez, a Cuban-American. "Nothing is off the table." But analysts warn the issue of remittances is not as clear-cut as it might look. While cutting the flow of US dollars to Cuba is popular with older, overwhelmingly Republican voters in the 600,000-strong Cuban exile community, the issue is a touchy subject for many Miami Cubans who retain strong family ties to the island. "Politically this is extremely dangerous," said Sergio Bendixen, a leading Hispanic pollster. "If they are not allowed to take care of their loved ones the political price would be very high." (St. Petersburg Times, 30/4/04)