By Anita Snow
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, Sept. 21, 1999; 9:36 p.m. EDT

HAVANA –– A Cuban negotiator said Tuesday that her government could hold on to confiscated American property for a time even if the U.S. trade embargo were to end.

Before Cuba repays U.S. individuals and businesses, it is likely to insist that the United States somehow compensate Cuba for nearly four decades of trade sanctions, Olga Miranda Bravo said.

"This is more complicated than settling accounts," said Miranda Bravo, an international law attorney. She represents Cuba in talks with other countries on properties nationalized after the Cuban revolution triumphed in 1959 and Fidel Castro took power.

The U.S. State Department lists 5,911 U.S. firms and citizens whose property was nationalized without compensation by the Cuban government, mostly in the 1960s. In 1961, the United States leveled an embargo against Cuba, citing the property expropriation, the island nation's alliance with the Soviet Union and its support for armed revolutionary forces in Latin America.

"It seems to me that the theme of nationalizations cannot be considered without the blockade," Miranda said in an interview with The Associated Press. She used the term Fidel Castro's communist government prefers to describe the sanctions.

Miranda's statement came one week after Cuba's National Assembly voted to declare that the U.S. embargo against Cuba constitutes genocide. The assembly said many people have died or suffered health problems because the embargo delayed or blocked shipments of medicine produced in the United States.

Lawmakers called for American officials responsible for the sanctions to be tried and punished, with sentences up to life in prison.