By CAROLYN SKORNECK
 Associated Press Writer

 WASHINGTON (AP) — It was just a daylong trip to Cuba to fulfill a family duty by spreading his parents' ashes at the church they
 founded a half-century ago.

 The surprise came on his return to the United States: a $7,500 fine for violating U.S. restrictions on travel to the communist nation.

 ``During the one full day we spent in Cuba, I scattered part of their ashes on the grounds of the church in Havana, and another part
 at sea,'' said Cevin Allen, 56, of Sammamish, Wash., told a Senate panel Monday, recalling the 1997 trip that let him ``deal with the
 pain of losing my parents.''

 But the good feelings from giving them ``a burial I knew they would have wanted,'' and reuniting with friends from his childhood,
 when his parents were missionaries in Cuba, crumbled when he came home. There, he said, he was confronted by hostile officials
 and, two months later, the fine for traveling to Cuba ``illegally.''

 Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., called such travel restrictions ``ill-advised,'' and urged Congress to end them.

 ``In an attempt to punish Fidel Castro, we are restricting the freedom of the American people,'' Dorgan said.

 The limits also hinder Americans' ability to spread U.S. views on democracy and human rights, said Dorgan, who chaired the hearing
 by the Appropriations Committee's treasury and general government panel.

 ``Castro has been in office during the terms of 10 U.S. presidents,'' the senator said. ``Maybe it's time for someone to say, 'This isn't
 working.'''

 President Bush called last July and again last month for stepped-up enforcement of the embargo and travel restrictions, hoping to
 encourage a transition to democracy in Cuba, said R. Richard Newcomb, director of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets
 Control.

 Newcomb said new demands from the war against terror have prevented his office of 129 people from increasing its seven full-time
 employees enforcing the Cuba rules.

 Yet the number of fines levied rose from 188 in 2000, the Clinton administration's last year, to 766 in 2001, the Bush administration's
 first year, Dorgan said.

 Newcomb estimated that more than 150,000 Americans go to Cuba each year, with about two-thirds of them getting OFAC's
 permission.

 James Carragher, State Department coordinator of Cuban affairs, defended the limits, saying travel to Cuba outside the authority of
 the regulations ``can help to prop up a regime which continues to harass and imprison its people who dare to criticize their
 government.''

 At the same time, Carragher said, ``Outreach by everyday Americans to everyday Cubans ... introduces the best of the United States
 to the Cuban people, supports the development of civil society institutions and brings alternative points of view to the island.''

 Congress has tried to poke holes in the four-decade-old embargo, pressed by agriculture and pharmaceutical interests eager to sell
 their goods to Cuba.

 The House last year endorsed cutting off funds for OFAC's enforcement of the travel rules, which are actually limits on travel-related
 transactions. That endorsement was dropped in a conference with the Senate, Dorgan said.

 The Senate is expected this week to approve an agriculture bill with a provision to make it easier to sell U.S. farm goods to Cuba by
 allowing private financing of the sales.

 Dorgan told reporters that he — either alone or with a bipartisan group of like-minded lawmakers — would push this spring to end the
 travel limits. Some Senate leaders privately support the idea, an aide said.

 Marilyn Meister, a 75-year-old retired teacher from Wisconsin, and John Harriman, a 37-year-old software developer from Chicago,
 also ran afoul of the rules. Each got fined $7,500.

 Meister said Monday that the Canadian group organizing her bike trip assured her it was legal for Americans to participate. Harriman,
 an avid player of the board game Go, said he was told he could attend an international Go tournament without worry.

 Allen, Meister and Harriman all told Customs agents they had gone to Cuba. The news was met calmly by the one Harriman
 encountered, but those who dealt with Meister and Allen were furious, they said. Meister said her agent went ``into a rage'' and
 made her feel ``like the most horrible of criminals.''

 OFAC cannot look the other way, even if it wants to in a case like Allen's, because of rigid rules in the Trade Sanctions Reform and
 Export Enhancement Act of 2000, Newcomb said.

 Still, he said, most people are fined only a fraction of the $55,000 maximum.

 Allen and his partner, each fined $7,500, settled with OFAC for $700 total after the Center for Constitutional Rights' Cuba Travel
 Docket got involved. Meister and Harriman's $7,500 fines remain unresolved because OFAC has no administrative law judge, even
 though 1998 rules require one.