HAVANA (AP) -- Fidel Castro's government called for a huge street protest
                  Wednesday against moves in the U.S. Congress it contends will strengthen rather
                  than ease sanctions against the communist island.

                  A bill approved by the House last week would allow Castro's government to buy
                  food from the United States for the first time in nearly 40 years. But Havana says
                  that because of tight restrictions on financing, as well as travel by Americans to
                  the island, it will not spend a single cent on American food or medicine under the
                  proposed law.

                  Cuban officials were pleased earlier this year about growing American support
                  for an easing of the U.S. trade embargo that was imposed in 1962 and
                  significantly tightened the following year in an attempt to squeeze Castro's
                  government.

                  But they see the current congressional legislation as a definite step back.

                  "Our country will not buy a single cent of food or medicine from the United States," read an editorial
                  published Monday on the front pages of the Communist Party daily Granma and the workers'
                  weekly Trabajadores. "First, for elemental reasons of ethics and dignity we cannot accept humiliating
                  and unjust conditions that maintain intact all the laws and measures adopted as part of the cruel
                  economic war against our people."

                  "In practice, it will be totally impossible to buy food and medicine from the
                  United States" under the financing restrictions, it added.

                  The House approved the measure as part of a $78 billion spending bill. It still
                  needs Senate approval before it goes to President Clinton, who has said he will
                  sign it.

                  Even the bill's most ardent supporters have acknowledged the proposed law
                  imposes tight restrictions on financing and travel that will initially limit business
                  between the two countries.

                  Neither the federal government nor U.S. banks can finance the food sales, so
                  Cuba would have to pay cash or get credit from a third country.

                  Among Havana's biggest complaints about the bill are the tightened restrictions
                  on U.S. travel to the island. Most U.S. citizens already are effectively barred
                  from visiting Cuba because of spending restrictions under the trade embargo.

                  Wednesday's march, the editorial said, will also be "a protest for the gross
                  violation of the constitutional rights of Americans to visit and know Cuba, where
                  they have always been received with hospitality and respect."

                  During the seven-month battle to repatriate Elian Gonzalez, the 7-year-old boy
                  who was returned to Cuba from the United States in late June, Havana was
                  pleased by growing support among the American people to lift the U.S. trade
                  embargo imposed in 1962.

                  "It was evident that President Clinton as well as the majority of Congress and the
                  American people were getting tired of a stupid and cruel policy," said the
                  editorial. But that momentum was lost amid presidential election-year politics, it
                  added.

                  Castro's government also protested another congressional bill, recently approved
                  by both houses, that will allow families of three men killed when their civilian
                  planes were shot down by Cuban fighter jets in 1996 to receive $58 million in
                  Cuban funds. The money will be taken from AT&T accounts frozen by the U.S.
                  government since the 1960s.

                  Copyright 2000 The Associated Press.