The 32-member contingent includes the chairman and executive
editor of the Miami Herald, which is published in the home of
the largest community of hard-line Cuban exiles opposed to
Castro's government.
"The primary mission is to help editors understand places
that are in the news, so I hope the primary outcome is
education,'' said Lee Stinnett, executive director of the
Reston-based American Society of Newspaper Editors, which
organized the trip. "We've asked for appointments with Fidel
Castro and Raul Castro.''
U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Republican from Miami, has
protested the planned trip, saying it "is offensive not only to
the Cuban people's right to live in freedom, but to the freedom
of the press throughout the world that (the editors' group)
purportedly supports.''
A spokesman for Diaz-Balart said Cuba systematically
withheld press credentials from newspaper reporters who had been
critical of the government, including several with the Miami
Herald and sister paper El Nuevo Herald.
Stinnett said that editors with the Boston Globe,
Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Charlotte Observer, Portland Oregonian
and Detroit Free Press, among others, would make the three-day
trip, arriving in Cuba Wednesday.
They would meet in Havana with Carlos Lage, vice president
of the Councils of Ministers and State, and Ricardo Alarcon,
head of the national assembly and a top figure in Castro's
government, Stinnett said.
The group would also make a trip to Varadero, a beach resort
area, to meet with business officials and foreign investors, he
said.
© Reuters Ltd.