Jan 2002 - Americans visit as Cuba hopes to renew U.S. interest in trade***HAVANA -- (AP) -- About 100 young American entrepreneurs and their families, about 500 people in all, were traveling Thursday to Cuba, where officials hope a new flood of U.S. visitors will revive interest in lifting trade sanctions against this nation. Representatives of the Young Presidents Organization, their spouses and their children are among nearly 2,000 Americans traveling to the communist nation in January under licenses from the U.S. Treasury Department.
Also among the American visitors to Cuba this month are Republican U.S. senators -- Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island -- who arrived in Cuba on Wednesday. Seven U.S. Representatives were arriving here later Thursday with Sally Grooms Cowal, a former U.S. ambassador to Trinidad and president of the Cuba Policy Foundation, one of the best-known anti-embargo groups in the United States. A host of other representatives of American business and agriculture were expected here later in January.
The visits demonstrate reactivated U.S. interest in Cuba after attention was diverted away from the island following the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States, said Kirby Jones, a Cuba trade consultant. ``I think people are becoming energized about Cuba again because of the sales,'' Jones said, referring to deliveries in December of the first American food directly sold to the communist country in nearly four decades.
``Now Cuba has done some real business,'' said Kirby, president of Alamar Associates of Washington, a Cuba trade consulting firm.***