Senator Invites Cubans to N.Dakata Despite US Ban Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - JosePertierra@aol.com [Comment by Karen Wald : It's fine for Dorgan's office to insist on visas for the Alimport folks, but it's not just the State Department he has to worry about. Since the ban on ALL non-immigrant visas for people from countries on the US "terrorist list" includes Cuba, Dorgan better take a look at how his own state's senators voted on that one. The vote was 97-0. Three didn't vote --one obviously Barbara Boxer, who was in Cuba at the time. Who were the other two? kw] Alas, karen did not supply the answer to her own question, but one might ask Dorgan himself: Sen. Byron Dorgan: http://dorgan.senate.gov/ by Christopher Thorne WASHINGTON, April 23 (AP)--A Democratic senator who favors ending the 40-year-old U.S. trade embargo with Cuba is inviting Cuban officials to visit his home state, North Dakota, even though the State Department has revoked their visas. Sen. Byron Dorgan sent a letter Tuesday to Pedro Alvarez, president of Alimport, the Cuban agency that buys food from abroad, and asked him to come to North Dakota to discuss buying wheat and beans. Dorgan said he has told Secretary of State Colin Powell about the invitation and asked Powell to see that Alvarez and other Alimport officials get visas. `If Cuba wants to buy dried beans and wheat, and North Dakota's family farmers want to sell those products to Cuba, the State Department needs to step aside and allow those sales to take place,'' Dorgan said. Alvarez and other Alimport officials had planned to travel to the United States to buy food, but the State Department revoked their previously approved visas this month. Dorgan said the State Department told members of his staff that the visas were canceled because the Bush administration's policy was not to encourage grain trade with Cuba. Edward Dickens, a spokesman for the Bureau of Consular Affairs of the State Department, said it is long-standing U.S. policy to discourage travel in the United States by members of the Cuban government. Cash grain sales are allowed with the communist-run island under a law enacted two years ago. The law forbids private or public financing of such sales. Alimport has bought about $75 million in U.S. farm products in the past six months. Alvarez's trip could have produced about $25 million in new sales, according to the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. The North Dakota Farm Bureau also is pushing for the administration to grant visas. If that doesn't happen, bureau officials may seek to travel to Cuba to negotiate food sales. `Exporting U.S. agricultural products to Cuba is not an easy task, but if we succeed, it will bring millions of dollars into the state,'' Farm Bureau President Eric Aasmundstad said. Also on Tuesday, the House voted 273-143 to urge its own negotiators at a House-Senate conference on a major farm bill to accept the Senate version that repeals existing restrictions against private financing of agricultural sales to Cuba. The vote is not binding on the negotiators and the Senate provision is opposed by the administration. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytcari-04.25.02-19:12:39-19475