Administration won't let farm delegation go to Cuba

CHICAGO -- The Bush administration is blocking an Illinois farm group's planned delegation of 98 Americans from traveling to Cuba this week.

The Farm Foundation in Oak Brook had planned to bring a group of agribusiness representatives, including former U.S. agriculture secretaries Mike Espy and Dan Glickman, to Cuba to discuss farming practices, human rights and distribution of American medicines. The planned trip was to be a follow-up to last month's humanitarian shipment of $300,000 in frozen chicken thighs and $2.5 million of corn to the communist country.

But the U.S. Treasury Department has denied the travel application. The trip's organizers said Treasury officials told them the group is too large, contains too many spouses and lacks focus.

"We're perplexed and disappointed," Farm Foundation president Walter J. Armbruster said.

Treasury officials would not discuss the reasons for the denial, but said the application was carefully reviewed.

Last week nearly 500 Americans were allowed to travel to Cuba, and 2,000 are expected to travel under approved licenses this month. Wayne Smith, former chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana and a fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C., said the farm group's denial shows how arbitrarily the United States enforces its embargo against Cuba.