BY GABRIEL MOLINA

                   THE amendment presented by Senators Robert Torricelli and Bob
                   Smith aimed at thwarting a bill to modify U.S. trade policy on Cuba
                   has been defeated in the Senate.

                   The amendment would have required, before any transaction with
                   Cuba could take place, that the U.S. president certify that Cuba does
                   not support terrorism and that fugitives from U.S. justice currently
                   living on the island be returned to that country.

                   Since December 10, the Senate has been debating a bill to allow the
                   financing of food and medicine sales to Cuba.

                   Crafty New Jersey Democrat Torricelli is known for his contacts with
                   Cuban-American right wing Miami-based extremists. He has been on
                   their payroll ever since he introduced a law to strengthen the
                   blockade on Cuba, at the very moment the Soviet Union was
                   disbanded.

                   New Jersey-born Smith is a Republican senator for New Hampshire.
                   During the Viet Nam war he served in the Navy at the Gulf of Tonkin.
                   A member of the Armed Forces Committee, according to the
                   Senate’s website he supports large military budgets and the costly
                   missile defense system known as Star Wars. Open Secrets, the
                   website sponsored by the Washington-based Center for Responsive
                   Politics, reveals that in his last electoral campaign, Smith collected
                   almost $1.8 million USD; he spent just over half a million and kept
                   more than $1.3 million USD.

                   Last year, a change in the legislation on trade with Cuba, allowing the
                   sale of U.S. agricultural and medical products to the island, was
                   approved by Congress and signed by President Bush. Nevertheless,
                   Cuban-American legislators, allied with other right-wing extremists,
                   succeeded adding on an amendment prohibiting any type of public or
                   private funding for such sales.

                   Both the Cuban authorities and representatives of U.S. farmers, who
                   advocated such sales, agree that the measure prohibiting financing
                   made it practically impossible to implement the new trade policy.

                   The possibility of ending the financial restrictions on food and
                   medicine sales to Cuba is contained in a proposal by Democratic
                   Senator Tom Harkin, president of Senate Agriculture Committee. The
                   proposal attempts to introduce a measure modifying the text of the
                   Nethercutt Amendment to the Agricultural Appropriations Act, Public
                   Law 106-387, which prohibits the U.S. government and private
                   companies from financing sales of the above-mentioned products.

                   The Agriculture Committee has already voted in favor of this
                   financing, but the bill’s next hurdle is full Senate approval. Analysts
                   consider that the vote on Torricelli’s amendment indicates that most
                   senators are in favor of changing trade policy toward Cuba.
                   Afterwards, the bill passes to the conference committee to unify the
                   Senate and House versions.

                   This year, North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan tried to include a
                   similar amendment in the 2002 Agricultural Appropriations Act, but
                   after the September 11 tragedies it was decided not to debate this,
                   in order to facilitate approval of the budget by omitting controversial
                   themes. If the bill passes in both houses, the president would have to
                   sign it in order for it to become law, and there are indications that the
                   Bush administration may oppose the bill.