Cuba says ready to establish 'healthy' relations with US

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, October 16, 2003

Cuba says ready to establish 'healthy' relations with US

The Cuban government said Wednesday it is ready to establish "healthy" relations with the United States, which imposed a full unilateral embargo on the Caribbean country four decades ago.

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The Cuban government said Wednesday it is ready to establish "healthy" relations with the United States, which imposed a full unilateral embargo on the Caribbean country four decades ago.

"We have created an economic and social infrastructure, but above all, human capabilities that make us fully trust our opportunities to develop healthy relations with the United States," said Vice Foreign Trade Minister Pedro Padron, in an interactiveInternet forum.

But eventual changes in relations with the United States would not change the direction, nor the "deeply human sense of our social project," he said.

On the embargo, Padron said despite the US blockade, Cuba was maintaining trade relations with more than 170 countries from all over the world.

Nevertheless, he said, the blockade had taken its toll on Cubanexports and Cuba lost 65 million US dollars last year due to higher-than-normal costs in transportation.

The sanctions also had an negative impact on the exchange rate,which in turn affected prices of products when they were invoiced and collected in foreign currencies, he said. Cuba's national currency, the pesos, has much less purchasing power than the dollar.

Padron said losses from hiring services at higher-than-normal prices amounted to 400 million dollars last year.

Statistics showed that total losses caused by Washington's unilateral embargo had amounted to more than 72 billion dollars over the past four decades.

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