By VANESSA ARRINGTON
Associated Press Writer

HAVANA -- In communist Cuba, milk rations for children stop at age 7, blackouts stop the fans in sweltering homes, and it's anyone's guess whether there'll be cooking gas this month.

Such banes of daily life are the product of the U.S. trade embargo and could be removed in a year of sanctions being lifted, Cuba's foreign minister said Thursday as he launched the island's annual international campaign against the embargo.

Cuba has lost an average of $1.8 billion a year in trade since the first sanctions were imposed in 1960, a year after the Cuban revolution thrust Fidel Castro into power, Felipe Perez Roque told a news conference.

Steadily strengthened in subsequent years, the embargo now prohibits virtually all trade between the two countries, except for the sale to Cuba of some U.S. food and medicine.

Cuba is free to trade with the rest of the world, and it's not always clear which hardships are due to sanctions, and which to a centrally controlled economy criticized by detractors as inefficient. But Perez Roque blamed it all on the sanctions, calling them "an act of genocide."

"Seven of every 10 Cubans have been born under and lived during the blockade," Perez Roque said. "They have had to suffer the adversity and limitations of this brutal policy."

If the island could recover income from trading with the United States, within a year Cuba could build 100,000 new houses, supply cooking gas to 2.4 million homes that currently go without and provide a quart of milk a day to all youth aged 7 to 15 in this country of 11.2 million people, the minister said.

It could also double the monthly chicken rations and eliminate power cuts imposed to conserve energy, Perez Roque said.

During frequent summer blackouts, some Cubans were heard hollering obscenities on their porches, so angry were they to come home from work and find their scanty rations rotting in their refrigerators.

Lacking spare parts, owners of the vintage Chevrolets and Buicks that still cruise Havana's streets keep them running with gadgets begged and borrowed from friends or bought on the black market.

Cubans earning average government salaries of less than $20 a month make fans out of salvaged metal and motors from old Soviet refrigerators. Little boys build skateboards out of discarded wheels and scrap wood.

But some things cannot be "invented" -- the word Cubans use to describe making or obtaining something necessary for everyday life.

Cubans in recent weeks have reported difficulty in finding antibiotics for children with throat infections.

At Thursday's news conference, a blind child said that because of sanctions, his school must buy Braille machines and paper from other countries, not the United States. That pushes up the cost by more than 40 percent, Perez Roque said.

Castro's opponents blame him and say sanctions are necessary to squeeze the island's economy and push Castro out of power.

But others question the effectiveness of economic isolation.

For years, Democrats and free-trade Republicans in the U.S. Congress have pushed for easing the sanctions. But a recent vote to that effect by the U.S. House of Representatives is expected to make little headway against an administration determined to keep up the pressure.

During a campaign swing in August through Miami, home to the largest concentration of Cuban exiles in the United States, President Bush reiterated his strong support of the sanctions.

"The people of Cuba should be free from the tyrant. And I believe that enforcing the embargo is a necessary part of that strategy," he said, eliciting cheers and applause from thousands of Cuban-Americans in the audience.

For the last 13 years, the U.N. General Assembly has condemned the embargo. Last year, the vote was 179-3 with only the United States, Israel and the Marshall Islands opposed.

Leading up to this year's U.N. vote on Oct. 28, Perez Roque presented an extensive document Thursday outlining the damages Cuba says the embargo has caused to the country's economy, foreign trade, and health, education and cultural sectors.

"Cuba demands that our people be left in peace so we can construct our future," said Perez Roque.

"The blockade gets tougher all the time," he said. "Nonetheless, we're still here."

Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press