Ministers Get OK to Deliver Aid to Cuba
Ministers on a three-week hunger strike along the Texas-Mexico border to protest the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba won permission Friday to deliver their supplies to the communist island.
The agreement was reached after two days of talks between eight members of Pastors for Peace and federal officials, a Treasury Department spokeswoman said.
“We are pleased to have been able to work constructively with the Pastors for Peace to resolve the situation on the border at Laredo, Tex.,” Michelle Smith said from Washington in a phone interview.
Demonstrators began a hunger strike July 30 inside a school bus that U.S. Customs agents had impounded. The bus was part of a 95-vehicle convoy carrying about 100 tons of supplies bound for Cuba. The other vehicles entered Mexico the day before.
The supplies were to be shipped to Cuba from Mexico, which unlike the United States has no restrictions on exports to the island nation.
The group has argued that the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba is wrong because Washington does not enforce similar bans on some countries with worse human-rights records.
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