Cuba Embargo Challenged

On a landmark visit to the embargoed communist island, Illinois Gov. George Ryan said Wednesday that Cuban President Fidel Castro gave him permission to take back to the United States an ailing child and his mother for treatment. Ryan also called for an end to the crippling economic sanctions that prevented the childÂ's treatment in Cuba.

The 7-year-old boy, Raudel Alfonso Garcia, suffers from portal hypertension, a potentially fatal disease that produces high pressure in blood flowing from several organs to the liver. Cuban doctors don't have the facilities to treat him.

Ned Walsh, a retired Baptist chaplain at North Carolina State University, has been lobbying the Cuban and American governments to clear the way for the emergency trip.

To speed up the process, the liberal Pullen Memorial Baptist Church asked Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C.-- a staunch supporter of the U.S. embargo of Cuba, who opposes efforts to allow the sale of U.S. medicines to the island -- to intercede on Raudel's behalf.

The senator had asked Secretary of State Madeleine Albright for an emergency humanitarian visa for the boy and his mother.

Earlier in the day, Ryan said eliminating trade sanctions would give Americans access to a Cuban medical advancement that could save lives.

Â"Yesterday we learned that they have a meningitis vaccine here,Â" said Ryan, a first-term Republican. Â"We have people dying in the United States from meningitis.Â"

Â"We can be helpful to the Cuban people and they can be helpful to us,Â" he said during a tour of an agricultural cooperative outside Havana.

The Clinton administration recently agreed to let a drug company with U.S. offices -- SmithKline Beecham -- work with Cuban researchers on tests of a vaccine against meningitis B for possible use in the United States. Meningitis is a potentially deadly infection of the fluid that envelops the brain and spinal cord.

The Cuban government has depicted Ryan's five-day trip -- the first by an U.S. governor since the 1959 revolution -- as a reflection of growing U.S. opposition to the trade embargo. Havana has increasingly reached out to American officials who have no connection to Miami or Washington -- the two places in the United States where resistance to ending the sanctions is strongest.

But the governor has made clear that his support for ending the embargo does not signify support for the communist government. Ryan held a meeting Tuesday with some of the island's best-known dissidents at the residence of new U.S. Interests Section mission chief Vicky Huddleston.

Supporters of the embargo, imposed in 1962 to punish Castro's government, say any softening of the sanctions will keep Castro in power.

The sanctions have especially strong support in the United States from a politically influential portion of Miami's Cuban exile community. Some Cuban-Americans criticized Ryan for visiting the island.

Suport for lifting at least the ban on food and medicine sales has grown in recent months as members of U.S. Congress look for ways to help hard-hit American farmers searching for new markets for their product.

By Anita Snow
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