First, I would like to express our gratitude to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council for inviting us to briefly discuss Cuba today. With certainty I believe that this idea of having an exchange about the Cuban reality comes at the right moment and we see it as a demonstration of genuine interest in our country.

As you know the Republic of Cuba is a small Latin American and Caribbean nation, called the key or the gateway to the Gulf of Mexico. Our country has an area of 45,000 square miles with a population of 11 million inhabitants. People from all over the world came to Cuba but our strongest heritage is from Spain and Africa, both of which we are very proud.

Without pretending to sum up the history of our country, we want to point out that what has characterized our country throughout its history is the long-lasting struggle for our independence and the commitment of our people to defend its sovereignty.

Together with Puerto Rico, Cuba was the last Spanish colony in this continent. Our War of Independence lasted exactly 30 years, and was the bloodiest of all the independence struggles fought on this continent. At one point, Spain had its biggest army in Cuba, and we lost one-fifth of our population in that war.

As a result of the Spanish-American War and of the American intervention, Cuba was deprived of its independence because, after long years of struggle when Cuba was on the verge of victory, the U.S. decided to get involved under the pretext of the sinking of the USS Maine.

What started as a solidarity movement of the American people with Cuban freedom ended as a new kind of domination. With the Platt amendment, the United States became the real power in the island, including the occupation of one part of our territory, the Guantanamo U.S. Naval Base.

During this century, we have had a very sad record of foreign interventions and a saga of corrupt governments and dictatorships such as Batista's, the last one, which ended with the revolution. Contrary to the paradise that some people have tried to portray, during the ?50s in Cuba only a minority of the population lived in opulence while the majority of the population was doomed to poverty. Moreover, rampant racial and sexual discrimination prevailed on the island [along with] political corruption, the infamous Mafia influence, and electoral fraud.

U.S. President John F. Kennedy himself, shortly before his assassination told the French journalist Jean Daniel "I believe that there is no country in the world, including all the African regions, including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my country's policies during the Batista regime."

The triumph of the revolution in 1959 was the beginning of a huge economic and social transformation carried out in the ?60s and ?70s, an achievement which was not a perfect one, as no human creation is, but which was guided by our firm belief that economic growth must go together with social development and social justice.

Unfortunately, U.S. reaction came at the heel of the triumph of the Revolution. Fully immersed in the turmoil of the Cold War, U.S. foreign policy failed to find a creative answer to the legitimate structural changes taking place in Cuba. The response was economic coercion, political isolation, undercover actions, armed invasions like the Bay of Pigs invasion and permanent harassment. And finally, a blockade on the embargo that includes food and medicine.

Cuba had no other choice but to seek European horizons to restore its economic, commercial and, in the long run, political relations. With ups and downs, successes and setbacks, this was our chosen road. Then in the late ?80s came a dramatic change in the world scene, with the dissolution of the so-called socialist bloc and the disintegration of the former Soviet Union. The collapse of the socialist bloc led many to believe that the demise of Cuba was inevitable. As you may know, Cuba is highly dependent on foreign trade, and our country has a lack of natural resources.

The disappearance of the USSR, our main trading partner, was indeed a hard blow for our country. By 1993, the economic outlook of Cuba was very unfavorable. The gross domestic product dropped 35% compared to 1988. Imports had dropped 75% and the national budget deficit reached 33% of the gross domestic product by that year. Our situation could be compared with the same the U.S. suffered during the Great Depression from the point of view of the figures, but with the difference that at that time during the early ?30s the U.S. was the first industrial and economic power in the world and Cuba is only a small country, a small island in the Caribbean.

Then,unfortunately, the U.S. responded by reinforcing the economic and commercial blockade against our country. The U.S. stepped up the blockade by supporting the 1992 Torricelli Bill and passing the Helms/Burton Act in March 1996. On the other hand, the Helms-Burton Bill, besides tightening the embargo, is threatening to sue foreign companies that do business in Cuba with reprisals in American courts, an action that has created disputes between the U.S. and its allies.

To cope with this difficult situation, Cuba decided to speed up a process of changes and transformations that we had already started in 1985 and decided to redesign and rebuild almost completely our economic and trade relations.

The Cuban economy has undergone serious adjustments, changing the way it works and also redesigning many of our economic policies. The main decisions are aimed at increasing productivity and efficiency. We are trying to open and insert our country into the world economy. The Constitution of the Republic was amended, among other things, to extend the forms of property ownership beyond the state sector.

Downsizing has continued with the state-owned companies, and in fact, the number and size of state institutions and ministries have been reduced. Today we have 15 ministries less than 5 years ago.

We have legalized the holding of foreign currency, opening currency exchanges, and encouraging the recovery of the national currency, "el peso."

Agriculture is moving toward greater involvement of the cooperative property, and a free market in industrial and agricultural products has been created. Today, 60% of agricultural lands are private or cooperative farms.

The spectrum of fields for self employment has been widened.

Our country, as a founding member of the general agreement on tariff and trade (GATT), and of the World Trade Organization, is working to adjust our legal dispositions to international standards and the emerging global economy. In addition, we recently signed a partial tariff reduction agreement with the Latin-American Integration Association.

Today, Cuban foreign trade partnerships are no longer concentrated in one regional market or in one country. Cuban trade with Latin America, the Caribbean and Canada, which at the end of the 80's accounted for only 6% of our foreign trade, last year was 40%. In other words, the Americas, with the exception of the U.S., have become our main trading partners. The European Union accounts for more than a third of Cuba's current trade. Spain, France, Italy, and Holland are our main trading partners in that region. We are also increasing our economic and trade relations with Asia, Africa and Australia.

In 1995, the Cuban Parliament passed a new foreign investment law. This legislation provides a legal framework for 340 economic associations, which are currently involved in 34 branches of the economy with capital coming from more than 40 countries. Most of the capital originates in Canada, Spain, Italy, France, Holland, Mexico and the United Kingdom. From this process, we do not exclude the American companies.

The most important sectors are tourism, light and basic industries, food processing, and construction sectors. Also, foreign companies are working with Cuba to explore oil and natural gas.

To strengthen this new policy, Cuba has signed 30 investment protection and promotion agreements, 13 of them with European countries.

A new law was enacted to regulate the work of duty-free zones and industrial parks under special customs, tariff and fiscal regulations. They are designed to attract foreign investment and to provide employment, technology and new markets. We are also working to restructure and modernize our banking system. The government established a new central bank, and a number of commercial and investment banks.

Because of all these measures, and against many predictions, in 1994, the Cuban economy grew a very modest 0.7%. This stopped the downward trend of the last years. In 1995 this favorable tendency was confirmed with a growth of 2.5%. In short, from 1994 to 1997 the Cuban economy grew 13.5%.

In 1997, almost every sector, except for sugar production that had a poor performanc, had a positive growth. The tourism industry, that supplanted sugar as the biggest income generator of Cuba, had gross revenues of 1.5 billion dollars. The majority of visitors were from Italy, Canada, Spain, France, Germany and Mexico. We are also working on new markets, including Sweden, Belgium, the United Kingdom and Brazil.

For the second year in a row, over one million tourists have visited Cuba; the exact number for last year was 1,170,000 and we expect to have 1,400,000 visitors this year. I'm not counting the predictions that the day it will be legal for American citizens to travel to Cuba the figures will be 4 million, and all of them will be more than welcome.

Nickel production is at record levels, over 60,000 tons. Fisheries grew at 13%, and last year we produced more than 100 million cigars. We hope that in the very near future all of you can enjoy a Cuban cigar legally in this country.

Citrus production increased 20%. Today Cuba's citrus industry has had joint ventures and economic associations with companies of Greece, Chile and Israel. Compared to 1995, electricity generation also increased 5% (let me say that in Cuba, 94% of the population and 95% of the territory has electricity service. Of course, this is not a big number for a country like the U.S. but in Latin America, in our opinion, they are very important figures.

Regarding other economic indicators: we are also working very hard towards a balanced budget - sounds familiar, no? The budget deficit that represented 33.5% of the gross domestic product in 1993 was reduced to 2% last year. In other words, we reduced the deficit in four years from 5 billion pesos to five hundred million pesos and we did it without cuts in education, without cuts in universal health care and without cuts in social security. We did it mainly with cuts in the production sector, particularly in the sugar production, [as we] who had a strong subsidy in the production of sugar.

One of the most important achievements in our opinion, has been to strengthen the value of the national currency: the peso increased its value from 150 pesos per one dollar in 1994 to 21 pesos per one dollar last week in Havana.

Today we have economic and trade relations with 138 countries. 650 foreign companies are established in Havana, and Cuba has commercial offices in 28 countries.

The economic recovery was stronger than expected despite the effects of unfavorable international prices for our trade, and the damage of two hurricanes which hit Cuba two years in a row, last year and this year, Hurricane Georges.

But we want to state very clearly that we have many problems and difficulties in our country. For that reason, it is not my intention to magnify the present economic recovery in Cuba. On the contrary, we know that shortages still persist, which impose many hardships and sacrifices on our people. The Cuban economy continues to suffer from a serious hard currency deficit, due to an increase in international market prices for imports, such as food and medicine. Prices for Cuba's main exports decreasd, and the Helms-Burton Act also slowed foreign credits, particularly for the sugar harvest and food imports.

Allow me to say that we have undertaken these economic transformations and adjustments, always trying to preserve the social development of our country. So these encouraging results have been achieved, while keeping favorable levels in health care, education and social security. These three sectors represent 32% of the national budget of Cuba this year, compared to the 5% allotted to defense spending, which has been cut during the last 5 years by 50%.

Today, Cuba has a highly- educated labor force, not only because illiteracy was eliminated in the early sixties, but because the average adult has over a ninth grade education. There are more than 600,000 university graduates, with 57 universities and colleges and 180 scientific and research centers.

In Cuba, a universal health care system covers the entire country and is available, free of charge, for all Cubans. The World Health Organization has repeatedly pointed to the primary care facilities of Cuba as a model for the developing countries.

Last year, Cuba showed the lowest infant mortality rate in Latin America, and one of the lowest worldwide, 7.2% per one thousand live births. Life expectancy is 75.2 years, with more than 63,000 physicians in 435 clinics and 278 hospitals. In the area of biotechnology, Cuba produces its own vaccines, and we have been able to eliminate many childhood diseases from our country. Cuba has also developed the first meningitis B vaccine that unfortunately is unavailable in the U.S. because of the embargo restrictions.

Additionally, as a way of sharing our modest achievements, in health care, a total of 28,600 Cuban doctors have worked in more than 30 countries. Just now, there are 400 Cuban doctors working in South Africa according to a bilateral agreement with the government of Nelson Mandela.

In sports, Cuba came in 6th place among the world countries at the Atlanta Olympic Games, in spite of is ranking of 64th place within the world population. And I'm not going to talk about baseball, you know it's very important to us.

Allow me to say that my country has also undertaken a new policy toward Cubans living abroad which includes the Cuban-American community, aimed at normalizing their relations with Cuba. Last year, a record number of 70,000 Cuban-Americans visited their homeland -- Cuba -- and we expect that this year the figure will be more than 90,000.

In addition, 5 years ago we changed our constitution from an atheist state to a secular one and we have a growing working relationship with several churches, in the first place, the Catholic Church, and the best example of this was the visit of Pope John Paul II to Cuba at the beginning of this year.

In foreign relations, our country has tripled the number of nations with whom we have diplomatic relations in the last 30 years. Furthermore, Cuba recently joined the Association of Caribbean States and just last week participated as observer in the APC summit. In matters of international security, Cuba signed the Ttlatelolco Treaty to stop nuclear weapons proliferation in Latin America and the Caribbean. Besides, we have just ratified the treaty banning chemical weapons. In the important issue of protection of the environment, in 1991 the Cuban Parliament passed a new legislation dedicated to the protection of the environment with the name Environmental Protection Law.

The United States is the only country who maintains an embargo or blockade against Cuba, but considering that the U.S. is the richest and most powerful nation, and our closest neighbor, that situation creates a tremendous strain on our people.

Just two weeks ago, at the General Assembly of the United Nations, 157 member states voted "Yes" to a Cuban resolution against the United States' embargo against Cuba, 12 nations abstained and only two, the U.S. and one country voted against the resolution. By the way, the other one, we have very close economic relations with them and one of the companies who has investments in Cuba now is a victim of the Helms-Burton Act. That is the situation about the embargo in international institutions like the United Nations.

Cuba has never been interested in creating unnecessary tensions in our relations. Over the years, we have been promoting, and will continue to encourage, exchange and contact between the Cuban and the American people. Cuba has no offensive weapons or nuclear missiles. Our country has no military bases in the U.S. It is the U.S. that maintains a military base in Cuba against the will of our people. Also, despite the absence of an agreement, whenever necessary, Cuba cooperates with the U.S. authorities to fight drug trafficking, a terrible problem for American communities. Our country proposes to upgrade and to strengthen this level of cooperation. Cuba is also fulfilling its obligation in the emigration agreement, as the U.S. administration has recognized in public.

Maybe the most important thing, a recent Pentagon report -- not a Cuban report -- points to the fact that Cuba poses no national security threat to the United States.

Under all these conditions and situations, we reaffirm Cuba's readiness to discuss any issue with the U.S., and for us the only condition is respect, respect for our right to dignity, freedom and independence.

We are working hard, and will continue to do so in the future, with confidence and optimism. We want to live in harmony with all countries of the world, including the United States. We need peace, not enemies, to solve the many problems and difficulties we will have.

In a world where the twenty-first century has nearly arrived, where integration and globalization are the conditions to work, policies of blockade and embargo are out of place. With all candor, I do believe that U.S. corporations and American workers are missing business opportunities in Cuba, as a result of the absence of normal relations between our countries.

It is obvious that Cuba as a market has nowhere the colossal dimensions of China, but it is also evidence that Cuba is about to take off as an emerging market of 11 million people, with a high level of education. We hope we are close to that day when the United States will accept Cuba as an independent nation and then we could have normal relations.

We would finally like to thank you all for being here today. This event, in our opinion, is an example of how important it is to dialogue, to exchange ideas, and to work together to improve the future of our children and our two nations.

Thank you very much once again for your attention.