Cuba, Mexico upset by US move to halt energy meeting

By Marc Frank

HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuba and Mexico on Monday condemned the
U.S.-ordered eviction of 16 Cuban officials from an
American-owned hotel in Mexico City during a conference with
U.S. energy companies.

The Cuban officials, including a vice minister, were told
to leave the Sheraton hotel on Friday during a conference
organized by the U.S.-Cuba Trade Association, which opposes the
U.S. embargo on Cuba.

The Cuban government said the action showed that the
45-year-old embargo was an international blockade that
infringed the rights of third countries, contrary to the U.S.
position, which says the embargo is a bilateral affair.

“The tentacles of the U.S. government’s blockade and
criminal economic war against Cuba reach any corner of the
planet, including to the detriment of other nation’s
sovereignty and laws,” the official Cuban daily Granma said.

Cuban officials and Kirby Jones, president of the
organizing association, said that after the first day of the
conference the Cubans were told by the hotel that they had to
leave and their deposits were forfeited.

Jones said the meetings, attended by representatives of the
largest U.S. oil refiner, Valero Energy Corp., Exxon Mobil
Corp. and others including Texas port authorities, moved to a
Mexican hotel and ended on Saturday.

Nadeen Ayala, spokeswoman for Starwood Hotels and Resorts
Worldwide Inc, which owns Sheraton hotels, said the company had
been asked by the U.S. Treasury Department to tell the Cuban
officials to leave the hotel.

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.

“It was an order that we had to comply with” because
Starwood is a U.S. company,” she said at the company
headquarters in White Plains, New York. “We were working in
accordance with the requirements set forth by the Treasury
office to remove the Cubans.”

Mexico City’s left-wing government said it had begun an
investigation into the incident and Mexican Foreign Minister
Luis Ernesto Derbez warned that the hotel could be fined for
discriminating against the Cubans.

“Both federal and local laws need to be applied if people
were indeed ejected for being Cubans. In this case it would be
a fine for the hotel,” he told Mexican radio.

OTHER MEETINGS UNCHALLENGED

Jones said he had arranged nine other meetings, in
different topics, in Mexico, including several at a Westin
Hotel in Cancun which was also owned by Starwood, and that they
had gone ahead without U.S. interference.

“It is absolutely extraordinary that…the U.S. government
on a Friday night should engage in efforts to kick 16 Cubans
out of a hotel in Mexico, sitting and meeting with U.S.
businessmen,” he said in an interview after returning to
Washington.

U.S. sanctions encompass U.S. subsidiaries in other
countries and prohibit the use of U.S. materials in the
manufacture of products sold to Cuba and Cuban materials in
products sold to the United States.

Despite U.S. sanctions the two countries did some $400
million in business last year under a 2000 amendment that
allows U.S. agricultural sales to the Communist-run Caribbean
island for cash.

The Bush administration and influential Cuban-American
lobbyists supports strengthening the sanctions.

Jones says that, with the United States increasingly
seeking energy sources close to home, it is ridiculous that
U.S. oil companies be forbidden from competing with the
Chinese, Europeans, Canadians and others in the sea off Cuba.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates there could be 5
billion barrels of oil in the area plus large quantities of
natural gas.

(Additional reporting by Alistair Bell in Mexico City and
Paritosh Bansal in New York)