WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration on Thursday banned a business consultant from taking American executives on an overnight visit to Havana to examine future business opportunities in Cuba.

In response, Kirby Jones of the Washington-based Alamar Associates wrote participants that he will hold the U.S.-Cuba Business Summit in Cancun, Mexico, Sept. 9-12 as planned -- and bring Cuban officials to Mexico to meet with U.S. businessmen.

``If business executives can't go to Havana, then Alamar Associates will bring Havana to them,'' Jones said in the memo obtained by The Herald.

Cuban speakers who will go to Cancun include National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon, Economy Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez and Vice President Carlos Lage, he said.

A Treasury Department official said the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which licenses U.S. ties with Cuba under the three-decade-old U.S. embargo, wrote Jones Thursday that it would not license the Havana stopover. Jones had argued that the Havana portion was ``fully funded'' by the Cuban government.

But Michael Rannenberger, chief of the State Department's Office of Cuban Affairs, said the issue was not whether the participants were violating the embargo by spending money in Cuba.

The Treasury and State departments judged that Alamar was trying to help executives scout out business relations with Cuba in advance of a peaceful, democratic transition, an interpretation that put the whole trip under scrutiny, Rannenberger said.