By Anthony Boadle
WASHINGTON, March 12 (Reuters) - While prominent Americans are visiting Cuba in growing numbers, the U.S. government has denied visas to Cubans invited to the United States to take part in a debate over U.S. policy toward the communist-ruled island, experts on Cuba said on Thursday.
Harvard University requested a visa for Cuba's finance minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez, to attend a conference on Cuba on Friday, but the request was denied.
The conference was sponsored by Harvard's David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and was to be a frank exchange of ideas on the situation in Cuba, organizers said.
The Clinton administration has also denied visas to 11 of 19 Cuban participants at another conference on Cuba to be held
on March 19-21 by the University of California at Berkeley.
The State Department said they were members of the Cuban government or the Communist Party and not entitled to enter the United States under a 1985 measure signed by President Ronald Reagan.
Since Pope John Paul visited Cuba in January and called for the lifting of the 35-year-old U.S. embargo on humanitarian grounds, there have been increasing calls for a policy review within the United States, even from U.S. businessmen.
"The Pope's visit has produced a thaw at least in terms of domestic debate,'' said Richard Nuccio, a former senior adviser to Clinton on Cuba.
"The administration finds itself in a difficult position, because they do realize that a space has opened up to discuss U.S. policy on Cuba since the pope's visit,'' said Lillian Pubillones Nolan, a Cuba expert at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank.
The interest in Cuba has led to a stream of visits to Cuba by U.S. citizens wanting to see for themselves the impact of the U.S. economic embargo.
A group that flew to Cuba on Wednesday included retired Gen. John Sheehan, formerly supreme allied commander, Atlantic for NATO and commander in chief of the U.S. Atlantic Command. Sheehan is a member of the advisory council for Americans for Humanitarian Trade with Cuba, a group backing efforts to modify U.S. policy toward Cuba.
Last week a group of 50 U.S. businessmen traveled to Havana from Cancun to meet with Cuban officials and explore trade and investment prospects. The visit by executives, some from major U.S. corporations, boosted a growing lobby to relax the embargo.
Draft legislation now before Congress and backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce proposes easing the U.S. embargo by allowing the sale of U.S. food and medicine to Cuba for humanitarian purposes.
Critics of the U.S. embargo say it has not succeeded in ousting Cuban leader Fidel Castro and only causes hardship to the already impoverished Cuban population.
But experts do not see any change coming soon, because the embargo was tightened in 1996 and turned into a law that can only be modified or lifted by Congress.
The so-called Helms-Burton law has angered U.S. allies such as Canada and the European Union due to provisions to dissuade foreign investment in Cuba by threatening sanctions against companies using properties confiscated from U.S. citizens.
Its supporters, backed by the hard-line Cuban exile community from Florida, say the embargo is the only way to keep up pressure on Castro's regime and ensure political change when the aging leader has gone.
"The Helms-Burton law has turned the screws on Fidel Castro and that is why he is squealing so loudly,'' said its so-sponsor Representative Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana. "We are not going to weaken the law at all.'' REUTERS
18:58 03-12-98