Gail Alexan­der

The Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre is sub­ject to US laws and reg­u­la­tions which re­quire it to ob­tain a li­cence from the US De­part­ment of the Trea­sury to host Cuban na­tion­als at the cur­rent Cari­com-Cu­ba sum­mit, the US Em­bassy has point­ed out. Alexan­der McLaren, the em­bassy's act­ing pub­lic af­fairs of­fi­cer, not­ed this yes­ter­day in a state­ment. This fol­lowed word that the Gov­ern­ment had to shift the sum­mit from the US-man­aged Hilton to the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) be­cause the US trade em­bar­go against Cu­ba and the Cuban pres­ence at the sum­mit. Cuban pres­i­dent Raul Cas­tro is the guest of ho­n­our at the sum­mit.

The US trade em­bar­go against Cu­ba was strength­ened in 1996 by the Helms-Bur­ton law which pro­hibits var­i­ous sit­u­a­tions con­cern­ing Cu­ba, in­clud­ing recog­ni­tion of a tran­si­tion­al gov­ern­ment in Cu­ba that in­clud­ed Fi­del or Ra&ua­cute;l Cas­tro. The Hilton's plant is owned by the Gov­ern­ment of T&T, but is man­aged by Hilton World­wide, a whol­ly US-owned com­pa­ny. A state­ment from Hilton on Tues­day not­ed that while the ho­tel had worked with the ap­pro­pri­ate gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies in the US and in T&T to se­cure a li­cence for the sum­mit, the ho­tel had been in­formed that the nec­es­sary li­cence would not be grant­ed. Hilton not­ed that vi­o­la­tions were sub­ject to sig­nif­i­cant civ­il and crim­i­nal penal­ties. For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan had said the Gov­ern­ment had to abide by in­ter­na­tion­al law on the is­sue and had shift­ed the sum­mit venue to NA­PA.