U.S. Pledges Enforcement of Cuba Embargo

Feb. 13, 2006, 4:07PM

U.S. Pledges Enforcement of Cuba Embargo
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER AP Economics Writer
2006 The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — A diplomatic rift with Mexico will not result in any
changes in how the United States enforces laws that prohibit U.S.
companies from doing business with Cuba, the Bush administration said
Monday.
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But an organization of U.S. businesses said the administration should
rethink how it enforces the Cuban trade embargo following a recent
incident in which a Mexico City hotel expelled a Cuban delegation
attending an oil conference.

The order came after the hotel received a warning from the U.S. Treasury
Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control that it could be in danger
of violating a four-decade trade embargo against the regime of Cuban
President Fidel Castro.

After receiving the warning from OFAC, the Hotel Maria Isabel Sheraton
in Mexico City expelled a Cuban delegation that was meeting with U.S.
energy executives in early February.

That action prompted a leadership body of Mexico's lower house of
Congress to express the country's "absolute rejection" of the U.S. trade
embargo with Cuba. Mexican regulators announced they would seek fines
against the hotel for violating Mexican investment and trade protection
laws.

William A. Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council,
which represents hundreds of U.S. businesses, said the threatened use of
U.S. sanctions "undermines government-to-government cooperation on
important security and economic issues and damages the goodwill of the
United States among the people of Mexico."

"Given the wholly negative backlash from the extraterritorial
application of U.S. sanctions, I hope that OFAC will refrain from
applying such measures in the future," Reinsch said in a letter to
Treasury Secretary John Snow.

But Treasury Department chief spokesman Tony Fratto said Monday that the
administration was not considering any changes in enforcement activities
following the latest incident.

"No one wants to see these kinds of international tensions over these
issues," Fratto told reporters. Fratto said OFAC was simply trying to
enforce the laws that are on the books in a uniform way.

"The law is the law and OFAC is an enforcement agency and it is
statutorily required to enforce the laws," Fratto told reporters.

The trade embargo against Cuba began in 1963 when Cuba was added to a
list of countries covered by the 1917 Trading with the Enemy Act. The
law prohibits Americans and American companies from doing business with
countries on the list.

Jake Colvin, the director of USA Engage, an affiliate of the foreign
trade council, said that the administration "has continually looked for
ways to step up enforcement and to apply new sanctions involving Cuba."

By contrast, there are efforts in Congress to loosen the trade embargo
against Cuba by lawmakers who argue that it has not resulted in the
ouster of the Castro regime and is only hurting ordinary Cuban citizens.

In 2000, Congress passed a law that allows cash sales of food and other
agricultural products to Cuba.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/business/3656338.html