Cuba-Lifting the US Sanctions.

CUBA- AMERICAN FARMERS WANT EMBARGO LIFTED.

The Alabama secretary of agriculture, the chairman of the state port authority and a state tourism official favor travel and trade with the island nation that has been off-limits since the U.S. broke relations in 1961 and imposed strict trade sanctions the next year.

But Cuba is so close to Alabama -- it’s only 626 miles from the port of Mobile to Havana -- that trade boosters believe state companies are in good position to sell their products in the emerging market of more than 10 million residents. And if a cruise were allowed to sail from Mobile to Cuba, tourists from across America would flock to Alabama’s port city, staying in hotels, eating in restaurants, spending money all along the way, they say.

Opponents are unmoved by the financial prospects and feel a relationship with Cuba would be downright immoral.

Chief among them is Gov. Bob Riley, whose spokesman Todd Stacy said trade with Cuba should be limited to medical supplies, food, humanitarian aid, and that’s it.

He scoffed at the economic potential.

"We could also profit from legalizing and taxing prostitution or crystal meth," Stacy said in an e-mail. "Just because we could make a few bucks doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do."

Under Riley, Alabama has seen an explosion in trade with other countries -- exports shot up nearly 75 percent between 2002 and 2007 and another 10 percent in 2008. Those exports support nearly 300,000 manufacturing jobs and another 6,800 in agriculture, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The governor recently said Alabama-produced exports reached $15.8 billion last year.

That news is great, but it could be better, said James Lyons, director and chief executive officer at the Alabama State Port Authority. He believes opening trade with Cuba after more than 40 years of a failed embargo would add to that surge in capital, jobs and growth.

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Lyons and Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks point out that the U.S. has open trade agreements with China, Vietnam and Korea, which are either communist, former enemies, or both.

"I don’t know what dictates American policy but there is something in this policy that I don’t understand," Sparks said of the embargo.

It doesn’t benefit either side, he said.

Taking it to the top

Patti Culp, executive director of the Alabama Travel Council, recently accompanied a group to Washington to share the council’s agenda with the state’s seven U.S. House members and two U.S. senators.

They delivered a letter endorsed by the tourism and travel committee and others in the Legislature, asking the congressmen and senators to consider sponsoring a bill in the U.S. House that would lift the travel ban to Cuba.

Culp said overall, the reception was cordial.

"Most of them were very receptive to give it some strong thought, some real serious thought and consideration," she said.

Montgomery’s former mayor and new 2nd District congressman, Bobby Bright, said he’d think about it, but didn’t commit to one side or the other.

"In the coming months, I will be closely examining our policy towards Cuba, specifically the long-standing trade embargo," Bright said in a statement.

"Alabama has taken great strides to maximize available trade with Cuba, and Alabama farmers and businesses would likely benefit from lifting or modifying current trade restrictions. I will be weighing those considerations, along with national security and geopolitical concerns, as Congress and the administration re-examine our Cuba policy."

Culp said U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, told them the issue was very personal for him, and requested they not even ask him to consider it.

Others in the delegation expressed disdain for Cuba’s former leader Fidel Castro, and concerns about human rights violations and the country’s poverty, she said. Castro has stepped down and his brother Raul has assumed control of the country.

Business leaders who have traveled to Cuba to promote trade have said a relationship with the U.S. would help improve the lives of poor people there, Culp said.

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The offices of Shelby, U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Mobile, and U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Saks, did not respond to a Montgomery Advertiser request for comment.

China’s OK, but not Cuba?

Gov. Bob Riley, a former member of Congress, supports the embargo because Cuba is on the U.S. State Department’s list of countries that sponsor terrorism.

Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria are called "countries determined by the Secretary of State to have repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism," according to the State Department’s Web site.

"The government continued to deny its citizens their basic human rights and committed numerous, serious abuses," a March 2008 report on the Web site said. "The government denied citizens the right to change their government."

Democratic state Rep. Johnny Mack Morrow, chairman of the House Tourism and Travel Committee, found it ironic that human rights violations in Cuba were so often cited as the reason for banning trade.

The same people don’t seem to have much problem with China, a U.S. trading partner and a communist totalitarian state that also happens to finance a substantial portion of America’s debt to the tune of more than $1 trillion.

"Without them, where would we be?" Morrow said of the Chinese.

Amnesty International and other human rights advocates have documented widespread violations in China.

Amnesty International reports that a half-million people are in detention in China now "without charge or trial." The country censors the media and the Web, and represses minority groups including Tibetans and Christians, according to Amnesty and other similar organizations.

In the face of China’s demonstrable human rights violations, Morrow calls using that argument to deny trade with Cuba "ludicrous."

Sparks: Start with tourism

Since President Barack Obama’s election, Sparks said he has sent letters to the president and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton asking the federal government to lift travel sanctions against Cuba, but not the embargo.

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He believes lifting the travel ban would open doors and eventually lead to trade.

"If we can get the travel sanctions lifted, more businesses from Alabama can go and explore the opportunities that are there -- and there are many," he said.

Steps have been taken toward allowing travel, Sparks said. And the call for ending the embargo is growing louder in the U..S. and abroad.

A law passed in 2001 allows Americans to travel to Cuba for agriculture and medical supplies. Churches continue to travel to Cuba for mission trips, Sparks said.

U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, recently filed a report saying the time is right for the U.S. to reconsider the embargo.

In a letter to colleagues accompanying the report, he wrote:

"After 47 years ... the unilateral embargo on Cuba has failed to achieve its stated purpose of ’bringing democracy to the Cuban people,’ while it may have been used as a foil by the regime to demand further sacrifices from Cuba’s impoverished population."

He wrote that the recent leadership change in Cuba created an opportunity for the United States.

The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution last year asking the United States to consider ending its embargo, according to several news reports.

Sparks criticized a federal policy that only allows Cuban Americans to travel back to their country for 14 days every three years. He gave an example of someone traveling there now and then having a parent di