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Anti-US protest blocks Sheraton hotel in Mexico City

Posted on: Tuesday, 7 February 2006, 21:17 CST

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Protesters waving Cuban flags blocked the entrance to a U.S.-owned Sheraton hotel in Mexico City on Tuesday, calling for it to be closed because it evicted Cuban officials on orders from Washington.

About 30 people shouted "Yankees out" as they demonstrated outside the hotel over its eviction of the 16 Cubans who were staying there last week for a conference with U.S. energy companies.

Presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar said Mexico was looking into the evictions and would apply the full force of the law against the Sheraton if a crime had been committed.

"It is an unacceptable application of a foreign law in our country, which goes against all principles of international law," Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Derbez said in a radio interview.

Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc., which owns Sheraton hotels, said it had been asked by the U.S. Treasury Department to tell the Cuban officials to leave the hotel because of the terms of the U.S. embargo on the island.

Mexican newspapers were filled with angry opinion pieces railing against perceived U.S. meddling in Mexico.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the Sheraton in Mexico City was a subsidiary of an American-owned hotel group and therefore subject to U.S. laws and regulations.

"Very basically, U.S. law would apply to U.S. corporations or subsidiaries of U.S. corporations, no matter where they may be -- whether it's in Mexico City or in Europe or South America," McCormack said.

He said the Mexican government had contacted the State Department about the matter, adding that it was the Treasury Department that enforced these laws. "We view this as a matter of asset control," McCormack said.

The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which enforces the embargo against Cuba, insists it is illegal to provide services to Cuban nationals and entities in third countries.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist candidate favored to win Mexico's July presidential elections, said the evictions were "in bad taste."

"Foreign laws cannot be applied in our country," he said on his morning television show.

Mexico's relations with the United States have suffered a string of setbacks in recent months. There have been angry words over drug violence along their shared border, U.S. plans to build a border fence to stop illegal immigrants and the killing of an undocumented Mexican by the U.S. Border Patrol.

Mexico's friendship with Cuba also has suffered in recent years as President Vicente Fox abandoned Mexico's traditionally sympathetic stance toward the Communist-run island.

(Additional reporting by Sue Pleming in Washington)

Source: REUTERS

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