BY PABLO BACHELET

WASHINGTON - Despite past White House threats of a veto, the U.S. House voted Tuesday to deny funding to implement new Bush Administration restrictions on Cuban Americans' trips to Cuba to visit their relatives.

The bill now goes before a House-Senate conference committee, where a final version will be negotiated. In the past, Republican congressional leaders stripped out any language easing Cuba travel restrictions to avoid a veto by President Bush.

The new rules, implemented this summer by the president, allow Cuban Americans to visit their immediate family members once every three years instead of once a year, and ban travel to visit more distant relatives like aunts and cousins.

In Tuesday's action the House voted 225-174 in favor of an amendment presented by Rep. Jim Davis, D-Fla., to the Treasury and Transportation appropriations bill to deny funding to implement the new travel restrictions.

In practical terms the amendment eliminates the new restrictions, but leaves the previous restrictions in place.

Supporters of the Davis amendment say the new rules attack family values, while those opposed argue they are necessary to stop funding a communist dictatorship.

''He will take the money,'' House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said in a reference to Cuban President Fidel Castro, whom he called ``a terrorist, a murderer and a thief.''

Davis, who represents the Tampa area, said the United States ``should not be in the business of separating families. This new family travel rule undermines families, punishes Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits and has minimal effect on the government of Cuba.''

The debate turned impassioned at times, with DeLay saying that any lifting of the trade and travel ban with Cuba would allow Americans to buy fine cigars and cheap sugar from the island but ``at a cost of our national honor.''

Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Miami Republican, called supporters of the amendment ''arrogant'' for believing that they know what's best for Cuban Americans, noting that the four members of Congress of Cuban descent backed the restrictions.

Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., displayed a photo of Cuban-born medic Carlos Lazo, who is serving in Iraq and is unable to visit his sons in Cuba. ``This American hero is abetting terrorism? Come on, that is offensive.''

Last week supporters of the travel restrictions scored a victory when Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., decided to withdraw an amendment to eliminate funding to enforce all travel restrictions -- not just the latest curbs on travel by Cuban Americans.