Ryan Says U.S. Should End Its Trade Embargo

                  By William Claiborne
                  Washington Post Staff Writer

                  CHICAGO, Oct. 28—Just back from a five-day official visit to Cuba--the
                  first by a sitting U.S. governor since Fidel Castro took power in a
                  revolution four decades ago--Illinois Gov. George Ryan (R) today
                  dismissed State Department criticism of his nearly seven-hour meeting with
                  the Cuban leader.

                  Ryan said his mission would have been a "failure" if he had not met with
                  Castro, and he said he will contact other U.S. governors to urge them to
                  travel to Cuba and meet with officials of the communist regime.

                  "Since I was the highest-level official in the United States to go there since
                  the embargo was imposed, it would have been a mistake for me not to
                  meet with Castro," Ryan said in a telephone interview. "My hope is there
                  will be other state delegations that go, and hopefully we'll lift this embargo."

                  State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said Wednesday, after
                  Ryan's meeting with the Cuban dictator, that personal visits with Castro
                  should be avoided "to not give the impression that anyone supports the
                  oppression that he has visited on his people."

                  Ryan said he did not interpret Rubin's remarks as a stricture against talking
                  with Castro. He said no one told him during a 90-minute briefing by State
                  Department officials before his trip that he could not meet with the Cuban
                  leader.

                  Ryan stressed that his trip was primarily a humanitarian mission, and that
                  the delegation of more than 45 state officials and representatives of
                  agricultural, medical, educational and cultural groups had taken with them
                  nearly $2 million in food, clothing and medical supplies.

                  The governor said "doors were opened" to an exchange of information.
                  For example, he said, the medical delegates learned of two new vaccines
                  recently developed in Cuba that are not available in the United States: one
                  for leptospirosis, a microorganism that can cause kidney and liver failure,
                  and another for a form of viral meningitis.

                  But during his trip, Ryan also repeatedly spoke out against the U.S. ban on
                  trade with Cuba, saying it harms both countries. In a speech Wednesday at
                  the University of Havana, the governor said, "As do many others in the
                  United States, I believe that the current economic embargo against Cuba
                  has not advanced cooperation or understanding between our two
                  peoples."

                  Ryan said today that there is an "opportunity for a great market" in Cuba
                  for Illinois, the nation's biggest soybean producer and second-biggest corn
                  producer.

                  The governor said that at one point during his marathon meeting with
                  Castro, he pulled out an atlas and showed him "how convenient it would
                  be" to transport Illinois farm products by barge along the Illinois and
                  Mississippi rivers to the Gulf of Mexico for shipment to Havana. He said
                  the Cubans told him their commodity transportation costs would be 25
                  percent less under such an arrangement.

                  "We didn't talk about trade. We talked about philosophy and prices,"
                  Ryan said, apparently mindful of Rubin's assertion that "The embargo is the
                  law of the land, and therefore there is no promotion of trade."

                  The U.S. embargo has strong support from the politically influential Cuban
                  exile community in Miami, and Castro opponents have criticized Ryan's
                  trip. In a letter to the governor before he began the trip, Rep. Lincoln
                  Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), a Cuban American, wrote, "It is hard for me to
                  believe that you would have supported business deals by Illinois-based
                  companies with Hitler's regime."

                  But farm groups, a powerful political force in Illinois, have been lobbying
                  aggressively for an easing of the embargo to offset the free fall in
                  commodities prices, caused in part by shrinking overseas markets.

                  Among the more than 40 delegates who traveled to Havana with Ryan
                  were Allen Andreas, chief executive officer of the agribusiness Archer
                  Daniels Midland Corp.

                  While in Cuba, Ryan also met with some of the country's best-known
                  dissidents and discussed human rights with Castro and other Cuban
                  officials. Rubin said the administration supported those efforts by Ryan.

                           © Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company