Obama to revive US-Cuba family ties

The US administration is planning to abolish limits on family travel and cash remittances between the US and Cuba, imposed on the island by the US since 1962, a senior administration official said on Friday.

US president Barack Obama has decided to fulfill a campaign promise and allow Cuban Americans and Cuban emigrants to freely visit and send money to their families in the communist nation, he added.

Obama's more conciliatory approach to Cuba, after eight years of hardline policies by the Bush administration, has sparked hope for change among Cubans and Americans opposed to a US embargo policy pressurising the Communist regime to change its ways.

The removal of limits on family travel and cash remittances will allow Cubans living in the US to travel freely to the island, instead of once a year as at present. It would also remove the ceiling of $1,200 per person in cash remittances to needy family members in Cuba.

The US Congress is considering bills that would lift the ban on American citizens traveling to Cuba that was introduced with other sanctions in the early 1960s when Fidel Castro's revolution turned Cuba into a Soviet ally.

Obama is due to meet Latin American leaders at a summit in Trinidad and Tobago later this month.

Meanwhile, members of the US House of Representatives led by Barbara Lee arrived in Havana on Friday to meet with Cuban officials.

The congressional delegation is the first from the United States to visit Cuba since Obama took office in January.

"Change is in the air and our president, of course, talks very clearly about bilateral relations with all countries in the world," said Lee.

"We're here to learn and talk and to see if there are any issues we need to communicate back to our government," she told reporters.

"We've asked to meet with key ministries that affect trade, commerce, tourism, agriculture - all those key areas we believe the American public would be interested in understanding and knowing about," she said.

However, despite all these developments the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) last week levied a $20,950 fine on Lactalis USA, a US affiliate of the French giant Lactalis, for trading with Cuba.

OPAC imposed the fine on the cheese and dairy company for violating blockade regulations by ''making electronic financial transactions in which Cuba or a Cuban citizen had an interest'' between February 2004 and March 2007, reported the Cuban newspaper, Granma International.

It is the first fine imposed by the Treasury department on a company for ties with Cuba since Obama took power, and it reaffirms the US policy of blockading the island, the paper said.

On 16 January, the OFAC issued ''legal clarifications'' that tightened even further restrictions on travel by people from the US to Cuba, affecting US companies that provide charter flights, book travel or send remittances.

The measures announced four days after Obama was sworn in as president were interpreted at the time as the result of resistance by recalcitrant ''Bush cronies,'' officials who were not happy about the change in administration.

Last month, the British Conservative leadership has called on Obama to lift the half-century-old American blockade of Cuba.

William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, became the first senior British politician to visit Cuba for many years, holding talks with the Cuban foreign minister and other senior figures.