Gotta LOVE the timing.
Posted on 12/18/2004 7:04:44 AM PST by GeneD
HAVANA (AP) - Cuba has agreed to buy about $125 million in farm goods from U.S. companies attending trade talks in Havana, officials said.
The deals, which were agreed on during three days of negotiations that ended Friday, surpassed expectations, Pedro Alvarez, chairman of the Cuban food import company Alimport, told The Associated Press.
Cuba had expected to sign deals worth about $100 million going into the talks, he said.
More than 300 people, primarily producers of American farm goods, attended the meetings, as did several lawmakers - including Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee.
The action led Cuba to buy 385,000 tons of products - including wheat, corn, soy products, powdered milk and chicken - from other countries, Alvarez said. The purchases meant U.S. companies missed out on about $100 million, he said.
"Food shouldn't be used as a political instrument," he told the AP.
Banks and the U.S. Treasury department have questions about whether a 2000 law permitting agricultural trade with Cuba requires that U.S. exporters be paid before shipping their products to Cuba.
Some exporters currently ship products to Cuba before getting paid, but Cuban importers do not get the goods until they pay the U.S. exporter.
Under an exception to the embargo, American agricultural goods can be sold to the island on a cash-only basis. Including this week's deals, Cuba has contracted to buy more than $1 billion in American farm goods - including shipping and hefty bank fees to send payments through third nations - since it began taking advantage of the exception in 2001.
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Associated Press writer Andrea Rodriguez contributed to this report.
Gotta LOVE the timing.
I find the recent news out of Cuba to be rather bizarre. Seems like it all started after Castro fell off of that stage and broke his leg in November.
Someone send Castro a copy of "Final Exit"
An awful lot of effort is going into selling this stuff to Castro. You'd think that if Baucus really wanted to help American business, he'd spend his efforts trying to sell our goods to countries who are not on the "banned" list.
The cash could be from China. They are out buying influence, and they had a delegation in Havana very recently -- in an interesting coincidence, it arrived the very same day a delegation from North Korea arrived, too.
What's the matter? The French, Russian and German crap not good enough?
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