Chronicle on Cuba - July 2005

July 4: The Naples Rugby Football Club will compete against the Cuba National Rugby Football team in Havana. “There’s no political agenda”. “We wanted to go to Cuba because of the mystique of it,” Sean Reddick, part-time rugby player, full-time trial lawyer, said. The Naples team has invited Fidel Castro to attend. Reddick insisted there's no political agenda. (The Miami Herald, 4/7/05)

July 4: The US Pastors for Peace set off its 16th occasion protest caravan against the US embargo through Canada and the US, reported Granma newspaper. During their tour, the organization's members aim to collect 80 tons of humanitarian aid, particularly medical equipment, school items and computers, which will be donated to Cuba. (AIN, 4/7/05)

July 4: James C. Cason, the head of the American mission in Cuba, defended his outspoken advocacy of dissidents during a July 4 celebration, marking the last public address of his three-year tour on the island. Responding to criticism he has continuously provoked Fidel Castro's government since arriving here in 2002, Cason took issue with "those who think it's more dignified to protest the Cuban regime's repression behind closed doors." "Is it provocative to point out that Cubans live under one of the most repressive regimes in the world?" Cason asked several hundred people at an American Independence Day celebration at his official residence. [Speech by Chief of Mission James C. Cason ] (AP, 5/7/05)

July 4: Cuban musicians, writers and artists celebrated in Havana the 229th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence. In the activity, held at Havana’s Amadeo Roldán Theater, Cuban musicians performed pieces from universal composers like Erich Kleiber, Igor Stravinski and Leopoldo Stokowski, among others. The program included all music genres, as well as merged US and Cuban rhythms. (Prensa Latina, 5/7/05)

July 5: C onservative American farmers, businessmen and some Republican lawmakers are likely to oppose the US policy limiting trade with the island. As Congress voted down amendments to the policy, those pushing for more interaction with Cuba questioned how the embargo can endure. "Will someone please explain this policy to me?" Dwight A. Roberts, the Texan president of the US Rice Producers Association, asked a news conference in Havana after describing financial losses to thousands of rice growers when US restrictions were tightened. This year, he said, the association will sell less than a third of the rice it exported to Cuba in 2004. "The policy just doesn't make sense," said Roberts, who visited Cuba in late June. (AP, 5/7/05)

July 6: James C. Cason, head of the American mission in Cuba, said he believes he accomplished everything he could during nearly three years in Havana, and will leave the island September 10 with a clear conscience. "We've been as appropriately aggressive as we could be," Cason told the press at his luxurious home in a residential suburb of Havana. "I have no regrets." Cason said that his successor is someone who will carry out US policy in the same devout, unwavering fashion. "Fidel said there couldn't be anyone worse than me," said Cason. "He may be sorry." (AP, 6/7/05)

July 7: Michael Parmly, a career US diplomat with experience in promoting democracy and human rights, will replace James Cason as the State Department's top man in Havana, Cuba experts familiar with the matter say. Parmly, a 26-year State Department veteran, served in 2001 as a deputy assistant secretary for democracy, human rights and labor, focusing on Europe, Africa, Latin America and South Asia. He recently returned from several months as the State Department's representative on the Provincial Reconstruction Team in the Afghan province of Kandahar, one of the redoubts of the former Taliban regime. He also teaches a course on Europe at the National War College. Parmly served as a peace corps volunteer in Colombia 1973-1975, but has no diplomatic experience in Latin America. This is in contrast to Cason, who was the policy director in the Western Hemisphere bureau at the State Department and a diplomat in Jamaica and Honduras before taking on his job in Havana three years ago. (The Miami Herald, 7/7/05)

July 7: The game between the Naples Rugby Football Club and the Cuban National Club on the Fourth of July in Havana was canceled, according to Kenneth Dunne, match secretary of the Naples club. Dunne, who was not part of the 45-person contingent that made the trip to Cuba, said he did not know the reason for the cancellation. Doyle Junker, the father of player Dax Junker, who traveled with the team, said his son told him it was the Cuban side that canceled the match. (The Miami Herald, 7/7/05)

July 11: The United States expressed its condolences to the families of those in Cuba who lost their lives as a result of Hurricane Dennis. In a statement issued by the State Department, the U.S. Interests Section in Havana informed the Cuban government that they “were prepared to provide immediate humanitarian assistance of emergency supplies to help those Cubans affected by the hurricane”. Also, they offer “to deploy an assessment team to Cuba to independently help determine what relief supplies were most needed”. [US Assistance to Cuba for Hurricane Dennis] (Office of the Spokesman, 11/7/05)

July 11: Fidel Castro's communist government, laboring to recover from widespread damage caused by Hurricane Dennis, turned down a US offer of $50,000 in aid, American officials said. US State Department officials in Havana and Washington said the offer was made for emergency supplies. "Unfortunately, the Castro government declined the offer," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said in Washington. During an appearance on state television, Fidel Castro said Cuba would accept no American assistance while the US trade embargo of more than 40 years remains in place. "We would never accept," said Castro. "If they offered $1 billion we would say no." Nevertheless, the Cuban leader said, "we are grateful" for the offer. (AP, 11/7/05)

July 11: The Coast Guard has increased patrols and aerial surveillance off the South Florida coast, preparing for a rising number of migrants from hurricane-battered Cuba trying to make it to the United States. "The cutters are out in force,'' said Coast Guard Cmdr. Timothy Ciampaglio in Key West. Two out-of-town Coast Guard patrol boats have been sent to the Keys, federal Customs and Border Protection planes and helicopters are assisting with more aerial surveillance flights and the Florida Highway Patrol is checking boats towed southbound on state roads to see if they might be used by smugglers. (Sun Sentinel, 12/7/05)

July 11: One of the four opening rounds of next spring's World Baseball Classic will take place in Florida, but it remains uncertain whether the powerful Cuban national team will participate in the 16-team, 18-day event, officials for the fledgling tournament said. All-Star pitcher Danys Baez of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, who defected from the Cuban team during the 1999 Pan American Games, said Cuba has dominated international competition the past three decades because it has faced inferior competition. But in the World Baseball Classic, Cuba would play Panama and Puerto Rico in the first round, and if it advanced to the second round it likely would face the Dominican Republic or Venezuela. Another obstacle could be the tournament schedule, which has Cuba playing all its games on US soil, increasing the threat of defections. (The Miami Herald, 12/7/05)

July 11: The United States' detention of five Cubans convicted of being foreign spies is arbitrary and in violation of international law, according to a UN panel ruling, The UN Commission on Human Rights Arbitrary Detentions Working Group has adopted a resolution of its investigation into the case of the five Cubans imprisoned in the US. Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez, Fernando González Llort, Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, Ramón Labañino Salazar and René González Sehwerert have been imprisoned in the US for almost 7 years. The UN Working Group, in Opinion No. 19/2005, noted three aspects of the detention and arrest of the five Cuban agents that made their detention arbitrary. Firstly, they were held in solitary confinement for 17 months, weakening their ability to mount an adequate defense, secondly most of the evidence against them was with-held, undermining an equal balance between the prosecution and the defense, and thirdly, the trial was held in Miami where it was impossible to select an impartial jury in a case linked with Cuba. (Prensa Latina, Canadian Press, 12/7/05)

July 12: As efforts to weaken US sanctions on Cuba seemed to gain strength on Capitol Hill last year, a young Cuban-American lobbyist and a first-term congresswoman from Florida swung into action to quash the initiatives. Mauricio Claver-Carone, a director of the US-Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee, contacted more than 120 lawmakers, donated money to their campaigns and urged them to reject any easing of the trade and travel sanctions. With first-term Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Pembroke Pines Democrat, urging her brethren to vote against the initiatives, Congress rejected five of the initiatives. Together, Claver-Carone and Wasserman Schultz represent a reorganization of the Cuban-American lobby in Washington that seems to be recovering the clout it had when the late Jorge Mas Canosa ran the Cuban American National Foundation. (The Miami Herald, 12/7/05)

July 13: Cuban forward Maikel Galindo, a member of the country's CONCACAF championship Gold Cup soccer team, apparently has started the process to defect to the United States, immigration officials confirmed. Galindo was one of two players who did not show up for the team's 2-1 loss to Canada in Foxboro, Massachusetts, a Spanish-language television station reported. The other player, goalie Odelin Molina, has not approached immigration officials, said an immigration spokeswoman. (The Globe and Mail, 13/7/05)

July 13: The head of the State Department's Cuba desk in Washington since 2002 will swap jobs with the No. 2 man at the US Embassy in Venezuela in a move that one analyst said shows the administration sees the ''same dynamic'' at play in Havana and Caracas . Kevin Whitaker, the coordinator of the Department's office of Cuban affairs, will become deputy chief of mission in Caracas in September. Whitaker will be replaced by Stephen MacFarland, a career diplomat specializing in Latin America. (The Miami Herald, 14/7/05)

July 15: The State Department is making the unusual offer of giving expedited visas to the Cuban sons of Iraq war hero Sgt. Carlos Lazo so they can visit him in the United States, people familiar with the case said. The offer is the latest twist in a case that opponents of the US embargo against Cuba have highlighted as a symbol of the human cost of travel restrictions to the island. Lazo confirmed to the press that his sons, Carlos Manuel, 19, and Carlos Rafael, 16, have been invited to the US Interest Section in Havana for an interview to explore visa options. A National Guard medic who received a bronze star for helping injured troops while under fire in Fallujah, Lazo tried and failed to visit his sons last year, just before new regulations went into place that limited family visits at once every three years. Lazo had been visiting his sons regularly since 1994. (The Miami Herald, 16/7/05)

July 16: American filmmakers who shot a movie in Cuba and screened it at the American Black Film Festival may have violated the 45-year-old economic embargo. What may be the first American feature film made in Cuba since Fidel Castro's revolution screened at the American Black Film Festival on Miami Beach. Not since 1959, when actor Errol Flynn made his last picture, “Cuban Rebel Girls” (tag line: ``Filmed during the heaviest fighting of the Cuban revolution''), has an American filmmaker shot a movie on the communist island, said the creators of “Love & Suicide”, a romantic drama shot in Havana over 12 days in December 2003. Cuba has been off-limits to American filmmakers with commercial motives since the US government imposed an embargo against the island in 1960. Luis Moro, a Cuban American filmmaker from Los Angeles, filmed “Love & Suicide” while attending the 2003 Havana International Film Festival, which was screening one of his earlier movies, “Anne B. Real”. Moro traveled to Cuba with about 10 Americans -- actors, a director, a cinematographer. While there, they used wireless microphones and a digital camera the size of a shoebox to film 15 hours of scenes in the streets and parks of Old Havana, in cabs, bars and homes. The filmmakers say they did not cooperate with the Cuban government. (The Miami Herald, 16/7/05)

July 17: Wayne Smith, former chief of the US Interests Section in Havana, spoke in Coral Gables urging normal relations between the United States and Cuba. During an event at the Biltmore Hotel, Smith called for a change in US policy toward Cuba beginning with the easing of travel restrictions and, ultimately, ending the trade embargo on the island. ''We should reduce tensions, not aggravate it, making it clear to the Cuban government that we do not have hostile intentions toward them,'' Smith said during a 40-minute speech at a conference titled Cuba and the United States: Relations in Permanent Conflict, Causes, Effects and Solutions. ''I did not say lift the embargo without conditions,'' he said. (The Miami Herald, 17/7/05)

July 17: Cindy Domingo has been to Cuba a dozen times, but hopes she isn't pushing her luck too far for her 13th trip, when she'll travel without US government permission to protest tight new restrictions on visiting the communist country. Domingo, a longtime Seattle activist dedicated to humanitarian and feminist causes, will accompany three other Seattle-area women on the July 21 trip and expects to join hundreds of other defiant travelers in a "travel challenge." Domingo has been an active organizer for women's rights since attending the UN International Conference on Women in 1995. She sees Cuba as the site of great progress for women in labor, medicine and farming. She gave presentations at international conferences in Havana in the previous two years. (Seattle Post, 17/7/05)

July 18: The number of US travellers to Cuba has dropped more than 60% since last July (2004). This is the harshest consequence of tougher restrictions imposed on dealings with the island by President George W. Bush's administration to promote a democratic transition on the island. For the precarious Cuban economy this represents losses of $95 million, excluding other restrictions on packages and family remittances. According to figures from the Treasury Department and organizations linked with the air travel industry, in the past 12 months some 55,000 people travelled from the United States to Cuba, about 35.7% of the number that had been visiting the island annually before the travel restrictions were imposed. (El Nuevo Herald, 18/7/05)

July 19: Louisiana State economic development officials are planning a third trip to Cuba in the hope of stirring up more business between the island nation and Louisiana businesses. This time, neither Governor Kathleen Blanco nor Mike Olivier, secretary of the Department of Economic Development, will be making the trip. Among the nine participants traveling to the communist nation on July 28th and 29th will be officials with the Port of South Louisiana, a medical equipment supplier in New Orleans, a dairy products producer and a rice shipment company. (AP, 19/7/05)

July 19: US farm and trade groups are urging Senate lawmakers this week to overturn a Treasury Department ruling they say has slashed agricultural exports to Cuba by altering how the country pays for US food orders. Congress authorized food sales to Cuba in 2000 if paid for in cash, a rare exception to the overall US trade embargo dating from 1963 against the Communist-ruled island. However, the Treasury Department issued a rule in February 2005 requiring Cuba to pay for American goods before they leave a US port. Senate panels are scheduled to meet to consider a bill funding the Treasury Department and other federal agencies beginning October 1. Farm groups are lobbying for lawmakers to include an amendment, which would roll back the Cuba trade rule. (Reuters, 19/7/05)

July 20: A lawyer for anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles is asking an immigration judge to throw out the US government's case against his client, arguing that it hangs on hearsay testimony that Posada masterminded the bombing of Cuban tourist sites and other terrorist acts. Attorney Eduardo Soto is also fighting Posada's deportation, saying that his client has had a relapse of skin cancer and has a worsening heart condition. US immigration authorities declined to comment on the motion. (The Miami Herald, 20/7/05)

July 20: The US Treasury Department and a key senator remained deadlocked over a Cuba trade dispute that is holding up Senate approval of officials to fill vacant senior jobs at the Treasury. Montana Democratic Senator Max Baucus, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, told four Treasury nominees at a hearing that he continues to be upset at an export rule change that makes it harder for agricultural producers to ship goods to Cuba. Baucus has threatened to block Treasury nominees until the rule is reversed. (Reuters, 20/7/05)

July 21: A humanitarian group's annual caravan to Cuba was interrupted when border officials started confiscating electronic items on aid-filled school buses trying to cross into Mexico. The group Pastors for Peace draws international attention each year to the US economic blockade on the communist country. Customs and Border Protection officials have in recent years cleared the group to cross the border, where they skirt US travel restrictions to the impoverished island by flying from Mexico. (Daily Sentinel, 21/7/05)

July 24: T he European Union decision towards Cuba has only brought about more repression, and the policy should be reconsidered, one Cuban-American leader in Congress, Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart, said. Mr. Diaz-Balart, a Republican of Florida, will be introducing legislation in the House to that effect, a spokeswoman said. "The resolution," Mr. Diaz-Balart said, "will denounce the most recent barbaric acts of repression by Castro's terrorist regime and call for greater solidarity from the international community with the Cuban people." The resolution will also call on the European Union to re-examine its current policy of "constructive" engagement with the Castro regime before the scheduled revisiting of the subject in June 2006, and urges America's representative to the United Nations to work with the world body's Human Rights Commission and other diplomatic organizations to secure international condemnation of the most recent crackdown. (The New York Sun, 25/7/05)

July 24: A new TV station backed by Venezuela's government began transmitting in various countries across Latin America. The Telesur network, which organizers call a Latin alternative to large media outlets like CNN, was being seen in Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Brazil and Cuba as well as Venezuela, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez said. The station, funded by Venezuela and also backed by Argentina, Uruguay and Cuba, has drawn concern in the US Congress, where House members last week approved a measure to transmit radio and television broadcasts to Venezuela to ensure citizens receive ''accurate news.'' (AP, 24/7/05)

July 25: Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles used a false Salvadoran passport to fly to South Florida in the spring of 2000 -- about six months before using the same passport to travel to Panama, where he was arrested in connection with an alleged plot to kill Fidel Castro. Posada's April 26, 2000 trip to Miami, revealed in documents from the US Department of Homeland Security, may become a point of contention during deportation proceedings that resume for Posada, who has been accused of acts of terrorism. Use of a false passport to enter the country is a deportable offense in its own right. (The Miami Herald, 25/7/05)

July 25: A US immigration judge has denied a request for bail from the militant Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles. Judge William L. Abbott cited allegations that Posada is a terror suspect and concerns he would flee if granted bond. Listing a series of terror allegations against Posada over the years, Abbott said even Posada's participation in operations against Cuba in the early 1960s could be considered terror under today's standards. Abbott's statement seemed to catch by surprise Posada's lawyer, Matthew Archambeault, who interpreted it to mean the judge would include the Bay of Pigs invasion -- sponsored by the US government -- as an act of terror under today's definition of terrorism. Another issue Abbott cited was Venezuela's extradition request for Posada. He said that according to US law, a person detained in the United States for being illegally in the country and who is suspected of terrorism in another country must remain in custody. The judge rejected a request by Posada's lawyers to throw out the government's evidence against Posada on the ground it's hearsay. Abbott said hearsay was admissible in immigration court. (BBC, The Miami Herald, 25/7/05)

July 25: Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman announced that he will lead a 10-member trade delegation to Cuba from August 13 to 17. The visit will provide the chance to explore export opportunities for the state’s agricultural products, as well as medical supplies. This will be the Governor’s first trade mission since taking office in January. (Southwest Nebraska News, 25/7/05)

July 26: Fidel Castro commemorated the 52nd anniversary of his revolution by taking aim at his nemesis, the Bush administration, and bitterly accusing it of financing and promoting recent anti-government dissident demonstrations. Addressing an auditorium full of Communist Party leaders and handpicked supporters, Castro called the top US diplomat in Havana a "grotesque character," and sternly warned that future protests planned by Cuba's dissidents will be thwarted "as many times as necessary." Castro accused the US administration of promoting subversion and destabilization in the island through the leading role of its Interests Sections in Havana. He said the administration of US President George W Bush has used over a hundred million USD for that purpose, pursuing multiple aggressions against Cuba, including interference with radio and television transmissions. [Discurso de Fidel Castro] (Prensa Latina, 27/7/05)

July 26: Pastors for Peace religious foundation leader Lucius Walter conveyed a special greeting to Fidel Castro, on the occasion of the 52nd anniversary of the attack on the Moncada barrack. Speaking from McAllen border crossing in Texas to the press, Walker said the 16th Friendship Caravan to Cuba members joyfully welcomed July 26th. Lucius Walker noted he remained at the McAllen border crossing to demand the US administration return a portion of the humanitarian aid to Cuba that North American authorities siezed there. Customs agents and the Department of Commerce are holding a bus transporting 12 computers, printers, wires, scanners and other electronic means, he denounced. (Prensa Latina, 27/7/05)

July 26: In what authorities believe is a first, 19 migrants apparently smuggled from Cuba landed in an upscale residential area of Sanibel Island on Florida's Gulf Coast. The group, which included three women and a young child, was taken by the US Border Patrol to its Pembroke Pines station and later released. No boat was recovered at the landing site. It's the first time in recent memory, and perhaps ever, that smugglers have unloaded Cuban migrants as far north as Lee County, adding hours to a run that typically ends off the Florida Keys. (The Miami Herald, 28/7/05)

July 26: Cuba and Venezuela are attempting to install leftist governments throughout Latin America and are closest to achieving their objective in Bolivia, a Defence Department official said. Roger Pardo-Maurer, a deputy assistant secretary who specializes in Western Hemisphere issues, said Bolivia has become the main target of the two leftist Caribbean countries because revolutionary conditions exist there. "There is no question" that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is "providing money and moral support" for Opposition forces in Bolivia, who are led by a populist congressman, Evo Morales. While Chavez provides the resources for the Bolivian Opposition, Fidel Castro provides the direction and organisation, Pardo-Maurer said. "They are trying to steer this revolution toward a Marxist-socialist populist state," said the Pentagon official, speaking to a gathering at the conservative Hudson Institute. (Jamaica Observer, 27/7/05)

July 27: US Undersecretary of State for Latin America Affairs, Roger Noriega accused Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro of meddling in Bolivia.  Noriega said that the Bolivian government is fully aware of the problem. The target of Noriega's attack was Bolivian presidential candidate and leader of coca farmers Evo Morales whom Noriega alleges is being backed by Chavez Frías and Castro. "It's no secret that Evo Morales reports to Caracas and Havana," Noriega said. (Venezuelanalysis.Com, 28/7/05) 

July 27: Venezuelan Vice-president José Rangel Vicente affirmed that his government asked the US Justice Department to pass the case of Luis Posada Carriles on to the federal system. In a communiqué, Rangel affirmed that his government’s request seeks Posada Carriles standing trial for the sabotage of a Cubana passenger plane in 1976, which killed 73 people, and not for the minor crime of violating US immigration regulations. (Granma International, 27/7/05)

July 28: The US administration of George W. Bush has created a new post, naming Caleb McCarry 'Cuba transition coordinator'. McCarry, a veteran Republican Party activist and old Latin America hand, is tasked with accelerating the demise of the regime of Fidel Castro. Introducing Mr McCarry at the State Department in Washington, US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said the US was working with advocates of democratic change on the island. "We are working to deny resources to the Castro regime to break its blockade on information and to broadcast the truth about its deplorable treatment of the Cuban people," she said. The post was recommended in a 2004 report on Cuba by a commission headed by Ms Rice's predecessor Colin Powell. [Announcement of Cuba Transition Coordinator] (BBC, The Guardian, Latin News Daily, 29/7/05)

July 28: Stefan E. Brodie, president of Bro-Tech Corp., a company that manufactures water-purification materials under the name Purolite, pleaded guilty to engaging in illegal trade with Cuba. As part of a plea agreement, Brodie, 63, admitted to a single charge relating to the payment of travel expenses for a Bro-Tech salesman to travel to Cuba in the mid-1990s. He was fined $10,000 and sentenced to one year on probation by US District Judge Mary A. McLaughlin in Philadelphia. Brodie's plea brought to an end a tangled criminal prosecution that began five years ago. In 2000, a federal grand jury issued a 77-count indictment against Stefan Brodie; his brother, Donald, Bro-Tech's vice president; James E. Sabzali, company marketing director; and Bro-Tech, charging they violated the 1963 Cuban trade embargo. The company had sold water-purification materials to Cuba in the 1990s. The government charged that the sales violated the federal Trading with the Enemy Act. (The Philadelphia Inquirer, 29/7/05)

July 29: Roger F. Noriega, an outspoken critic of Cuba and Venezuela who has been assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs for the past two years, announced his resignation, saying he had served in government long enough. He resigned a day after the administration named Caleb McCarry, a Republican Congressional staff member, to a new position: "transition coordinator" for Cuba, with the mission of hastening a transition to democracy there. That took primary responsibility for Cuba, one of Mr. Noriega's favored issues, away from him. (The New York Times, 29/7/05)

July 29: “The Secret War. Crime Chronology 1959-2002”, a revealing testimony of CIA assassination attempts against Fidel Castro, was launched at the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists headquarters. The book by retired Major General Fabian Escalante Font includes considerable information about terrorist acts by US governments and the CIA from 1959 to 2002. Cuba´s Parliament President Ricardo Alarcon stressed at the ceremony that the publication is very timely and contains important thoughts on political crime just when notorious terrorist Luis Posada Carriles has been arrested in the US for migration charges. (Prensa Latina, 29/7/05)

July 29: A religious group that gathers humanitarian aid for Cuba urged US authorities to release 12 Canadian computers seized at the US Mexican border under American sanctions against Cuba's communist government. The 43 boxes of computer equipment donated by Canadians were en route to Cuba in an annual caravan organized by the Pastors for Peace group when they were seized by US border officials at McAllen, Texas. "These were Canadian computers that were confiscated by US customs,'' said Genevieve Mutschler, a volunteer from the Canadian province of British Columbia. "They were sent from Canada in support of Cuba in its struggle against the US embargo.'' (The New York Times, 29/7/05)

July 29: A top senator ended a seven-month standoff on Treasury Department nominees after the Bush administration clarified new rules that the lawmaker said made it harder for US companies to sell food to Cuba. ''I pushed the Treasury Department hard so that agricultural exporters could continue to sell their products to Cuba,'' Senator Max Bauchus, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement. "I'm optimistic that this clarification will provide US agricultural exporters in Montana and elsewhere with another option to restart sales to Cuba.'' Agricultural sales to Cuba fell by about 25 percent in the first five months of the year compared with the same period in 2004 after the Treasury Department ruled in February that Cuba had to pay US companies before the shipment left a U.S. port, instead of after docking in Havana. Bauchus said the new requirement -- an interpretation of ''cash in advance'' regulations governing sales to Cuba -- was especially difficult for small exporters. Under the deal, the payment will still have to be made before the boat leaves a US port, but Treasury clarified that it can be held in a foreign bank that acts as a seller's agent until the shipment reaches Cuba. (The Miami Herald, 30/7/05)

July 29: Exporters may face fewer complications in selling US farm goods to Cuba under a Treasury Department clarification, one trade group said, but another doubted it would make any difference. The clarification said vessels could leave US ports as soon as a foreign bank confirmed receipt of payment. That could be slightly faster than rules in effect since February, experts said, and would spare sellers the expense of using letters of credit. "It should speed the process up and, therefore, facilitate additional trade," said Kirby Jones of the US-Cuba Trade Association. "The unknown is how the buyer (Cuba) reacts." Sales of US food exports to Cuba have fallen 25 percent since new rules took effect, requiring Cuba to pay for US foods before they were shipped. John Kavulich of the US-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, which monitors trade between the nations, said the option highlighted by Treasury was "nothing new." (Reuters, 29/7/05)

July 30: Cuban Parliament Speaker Ricardo Alarcon dismissed recent personnel changes in the US State Department's Western Hemisphere bureau, saying they will not affect long-standing tensions between Cuba and the United States. Alarcon joked that Roger Noriega, head of the bureau who consistently takes a hard-line stance against Cuba, would be sorely missed. ''I'm going to miss him a lot if he doesn't appear before cameras talking, saying dumb things. He's really a very funny person,'' he said. Noriega is to be replaced by Thomas Shannon, a career diplomat and Latin America expert at the National Security Council. (The New York Times, 30/7/05)

July 31: Tensions have escalated between Cuba's government and dissidents, but both sides bitterly rejected Washington's appointment of a "transition coordinator" to speed Fidel Castro's downfall. "Surely he will receive a juicy salary in his new job, but Caleb McCarry -- I assure you -- will retire without setting foot in Cuba," Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said in Panama. Cuban opposition leaders were at least as forceful in their reaction. "Any transition in Cuba is for Cubans to define, lead, organize and coordinate," said Oswaldo Paya, leader of the Christian Liberation Movement and promoter of a petition seeking democracy in Cuba. Other dissident groups that opposed the appointment on the same grounds were the Progressive Arch and the Cuban Human Rights and National Reconciliation Commission. “It will allow the Cuban government to raise the specter of foreign interference in the internal affairs of our country," said Elizardo Sanchez of the commission. "This appointment (…) constitutes an attack on our national sovereignty," said Manuel Cuesta Morua, spokesman for the Progressive Arch. (AFP, 31/7/05)