Group cites benefits for U.S.

  BY FRANK DAVIES

  WASHINGTON - A new group on Capitol Hill backing changes in U.S. policy toward Cuba began a push Tuesday to end the 40-year ban on travel to the
  island, citing benefits to the U.S. economy.

  If the travel ban were lifted and U.S. airlines, cruise ships and tour operators were allowed into Cuba, $523 million in revenue would be generated for the
  U.S. economy and about 3,200 jobs created in the first year, according to a new study.

  By the fifth year after the ban is lifted, more than two million Americans would be visiting the island, predicted Ed Sanders, a tourism consultant who
  conducted the study for the Cuba Policy Foundation.

  The foundation is a nonpartisan group that supports an end to the U.S. embargo and receives funding from the Ford Foundation and corporations
  interested in doing business in Cuba.

  House backers of an end to the ban on travel, who won a 240-186 vote on the issue last summer, said that this year they think it can pass Congress,
  despite the firm opposition of the Bush administration.

  ''The right to travel is a core, constitutional principle, and in the public there's a deep and profound revulsion over this ban,'' said Rep. William Delahunt,
  D-Mass., ridiculing fines levied on ''Iowa grandmothers'' bicycling around Cuba.

  He cited a poll in April by Bendixen and Associates that showed 46 percent of Cuban Americans supported lifting restrictions on travel to Cuba, with 47
  percent against changing the current policy.

  Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Delahunt head the Cuba Working Group, formed earlier this year to promote changes in U.S. policy. The group includes 22
  Republicans and 22 Democrats.

  Flake acknowledged that his party's House leaders have blocked lifting the travel ban, but he thinks that may change.

  ''At some point, other politics will overwhelm Florida politics,'' said Flake, who called the travel ban ''the most glaring part'' of the U.S. embargo.

  Under the ban, only academics, researchers, journalists, missionaries and Cuban Americans -- the largest group -- can travel to Cuba legally. According to
  several estimates, about 176,000 U.S. citizens visited the island last year.

  The economic impact of ending the travel ban is difficult to assess, and Sanders conceded that it would ''take five years for real benefits to be seen.'' But
  he said a ''tremendous pent-up demand and interest in Cuba'' would generate $1.6 billion in revenue for U.S. business within five years if airlines and
  cruise ships were allowed entry.

  ''Ending restrictions on travel to Cuba would provide a much-needed source of growth to the U.S. travel sector, particularly the troubled airline industry,''
  said Sally Grooms Cowal, president of the Cuba Policy Foundation.

  But John Kavulich, president of the nonpartisan U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, said those projections are probably too rosy. Cuba's infrastructure
  would not be able to absorb a big tourism increase.

  ''There just are not that many good hotel rooms,'' said Kavulich. ``If the ban were lifted, the economic impact on the United States would be quite
  limited.''

  An official with the Cuban American National Foundation, which opposes changes to U.S. policy, belittled the economic projections.

  ''Do Americans really want to stay at beaches where Cubans are not allowed to go, where there is such discrimination?'' said Dennis Hays, executive vice
  president of the foundation. ``I would put this study under the heading of summer fiction.''