Cuba News articles from September 2000

Cuba News archives from September 2000

US pressures Cuba to the negotiating table.
September 1, 2000... WASHINGTON -- After harshly condemning Cuba for its migration policy and denying travel visas to one of Fidel Castro's top officials, the United States managed to persuade Havana to restart stalled migration talks. US and Cuban negotiators...

Real estate projects reportedly moving forward after May halt.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... HAVANA -- Despite a decision earlier this year to halt most foreign investment in the real estate sector, sources in Cuba say construction on a number of projects is continuing and there are reports that negotiations for new ventures are...

Castro visit marked by diplomacy, little interest from business leaders.(Fidel Castro of Cuba attends the UN Millennium Summit)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Fidel Castro's low-key behavior at the United Nation's Millennium Summit was in marked contrast to his aggressive outreach to the US business community that characterized the Cuban leader's last visit to New York five years ago. During...

US: sales to Cuba could reach $500 million.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... WASHINGTON -- Clinton administration officials said that annual agricultural sales to Cuba could reach $300 million to $500 million a year if the US embargo were eased and Fidel Castro's government could secure financing for the deals. ...

Cuba approves Havana bureau for US papers.(Chicago Tribune and Dallas Morning News given permission to open news bureaus in Cuba)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... During the U.N. Millenium Summit, Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque announced that the Cuban government would allow the Chicago Tribune and the Dallas Morning News would to open news bureaus in Havana, joining the Associated Press and CNN....

Too bad everything doesn't move this fast in Cuba.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Subscribers to the electronic edition of CubaNews received word of the renewed US-Cuba migration talks nearly a week before we could get this issue into your hands. Not only that, CubaNews has begun posting especially urgent stories on the...

Habanos shifting strategy to maximize profits.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... HAVANA -- Officials at Cuban state cigar company Habanos S.A. say the company is shifting its priorities away from a rapid expansion of production and toward a focus on maximizing revenues. In recent years, exports have soared from 55...

US food exhibition in Cuba postponed.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... WASHINGTON -- An unprecedented US food and agricultural trade show scheduled for the end of the year in Havana has been postponed because the State Department refused to approve a license for the event. Peter Nathan, president of...

Cayo Coco & Cayo Guillermo becoming major tourism centers.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... The August opening of the five-star Melia-Cayo Guillermo Hotel has boosted the number of rooms in the Jardines del Rey tourist hub to 2,606, making it the third most important tourist destination in Cuba after Havana and Varadero. The hotel has...

Sol Melia purchase of Tryp expands Cuba's largest hotel operator.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Spain's Grupo Sol Melia, Cuba's largest hotel chain, just got bigger with its Aug. 21 purchase of rival Tryp for a reported $400 million in cash and Sol Melia stock. Tryp, another Spanish hotelier, manages 50 hotels worldwide and four in Cuba,...

Cuba aims to develop tobacco-growing region as tourist area.(DUMMY)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... HAVANA -- The government is promoting Pinar del Rio, best known as Cuba's leading tobacco-growing region, as an emerging tourism area. To help develop the industry in the island's westernmost province, the San Julian military airstrip hs...

Jardines del Rey Archipelago.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Jardines del Rey Archipelago consists of a chain of hundreds of islands, islets and sand bars, some of them under development, located off the northern shore of central Cuba. The island chain stretches 310 miles from Matanzas to Camaguey...

Tryp Club Cayo Coco.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Opened in 1993, at the depth of Cuba's economic crisis, the Tryp Club Cayo Coco was the first tourism facility on Cayo Coco. It initially had 458 rooms managed by Spanish firm Guitart. Over the years, it has been expanded to 972 rooms. There...

Snapshot of the Cuban merchant marine.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Cuba's merchant marine has 80 vessels with a total tonnage of 1.053 million tons deadweight. The government hopes to boost tonnage to 1.5 million tons. The fleet is divided into a number of autonomous companies under the supervision of the...

Putin to visit Havana.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to visit Cuba before the end of the year, but a date for the trip has not been set, according to Russian officials. During a visit to Moscow in July, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque tendered...

Alarcon and Lage are architects of foreign policy, economic reform.(Cuban cabinet officers Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada and Carlos Lage Davila)
September 1, 2000... CubaNews has periodically published profiles of leading Cuban officials. Below are profiles of National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon and Vice President Carlos Lage. The recently published CubaNews Business Guide to Cuba contains profiles...

Cuba and China step up cooperation but progress has limits.
September 1, 2000... Although the September 1993 state visit of Chinese President Jian Zemin to Cuba, was marred by tense talks with Cuban President Fidel Castro and followed by disputes over payment arrangements for trade, common interests have enabled the two...

Oil-short Cuba exported oil in 1999.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Oil starved Cuba -- a country where the government months ago imposed measures to reduce gasoline demand to counter the impact of high world petroleum prices -- exported 1.8 million barrels of oil last year, according to the Economic Commission...

COMMODITY EXPORT MARKETS.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Sugar Spurred by tighter supplies and hopes for stronger demand from emerging markets, sugar prices remained at two-year highs after languishing a 14-year lows earlier this year. Even the most cautious observers now seem to be more...

Hurricane Debby aids eastern Cuba.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Hurricane Debby proved to be more a blessing than a curse to drought-stricken eastern Cuba, which received the brunt of the August storm. Debby was downgraded to a tropical storm before hitting Cuba. More than 10 months of severe drought...

Cuba develops sugar harvester for export.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Cuban officials say a state company has developed one of the most productive harvesters in the world" able to cut 54 tons of sugar cane an hour. The new combine, called Harvester 4000, is technologically different from the combines...

Canadian firm finds shipwreck.(Visa Gold Explorations Incorporated)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2000... Canadian company Visa Gold Explorations Inc. has announced that it has discovered a shipwreck in Cuban waters "with an extensive debris field containing artifacts of archaeological and economic value." Visa Gold Explorations has a joint...

Fidelismo.(Fidel Castro, President of Cuba)(Brief Article)(Column)
September 1, 2000... A monthly report on Cuba's maximum leader Shortest Speech of the Month A six and half minute talk at the United Nations General Assembly Millennium Summit in New York. Each leader was supposed to have five minutes to address the...

RUMOR OF THE DAY.(access to Cuban stem cell bank in biotechnology research)(Brief Article)(Column)
September 1, 2000... HAVANA -- Cuba's biotech industry has something other researchers want. Sources say Cuba has one of the largest stem cell banks in the world and is holding talks with European and US researchers who are interested in accessing it. Stem cells...