BY TIM JOHNSON

 WASHINGTON -- For the first time in 38 years, a freighter laden with U.S. goods will depart New Orleans today and sail for Havana, bearing not only Midwestern corn but the hopes of some exporters that the U.S. trade embargo of Cuba could soon crack open further.

 Even as the 623-foot freighter took on 24,000 tons of corn in Ama, La., senators in Washington debated whether to allow easier terms for agricultural sales to Cuba.

 The M.V. Ikan Mazatlan will arrive in Havana late Saturday or early Sunday.

 ``It's the first shipment since 1963,'' said Pamela Falk, a law professor at City University of New York who has worked extensively with U.S. agribusiness. ``It's
 dramatically symbolic. It's the first break in the embargo.''

 Other shipments will follow. A load of frozen poultry leaves Jacksonville for Cuba on Saturday, and other grain shipments may depart from Mississippi next week.

 In the aftermath of Hurricane Michelle, which tore through Cuba in early November, the government of Fidel Castro offered cash for some $30 million in U.S. agricultural products, reversing an earlier posture to buy food and medicine only if U.S. companies were permitted to offer direct credit.

 The trade falls under a liberalized law on food sales to Cuba approved last year, and U.S. officials insisted that the deals in no way augur a lifting of the U.S. trade
 embargo. Grain brokers, however, invited two governors and a handful of legislators to a celebratory send-off of the Mexican-owned freighter in New Orleans this morning, viewing its journey as a symbolic opening of the closed Cuban market.

 ``There is excitement in the agricultural sector because this hasn't happened in a long time,'' said John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council.

 Advocates of the trade embargo say it is a tool that helps weaken the one-party communist state that rules the island. Opponents say the embargo has failed to dislodge Castro after four decades, and U.S. vendors are losing business to competitors.

 The clashing views underscored the crosscurrents in the debate on U.S. policy toward Cuba.

 Brokers of agricultural commodities hope the sales to Cuba will give momentum to grain-producing Midwestern states, where legislators are eager to find new markets, to ease the embargo of Cuba.

 ``It's highly important,'' said Mark K. Lambert, of the Illinois Corn Growers Association in Bloomington, Ill. ``What better place to showcase our new attitude on trade than by shipping to one of our closest neighbors. It's a market that you can darn near hit with a stone from Florida.'' In a symbolic nod to the corn-producing Midwest, ADM, the Decatur, Ill., grain conglomerate, filled the freighter with corn from nine states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin.

 ``We are hopeful that this will bring the United States closer to our goal, which is to provide U.S. products and goods to the whole world,'' said Karla Miller, ADM's vice president for corporate affairs. Miller said she and other ADM executives would be on hand at the Havana docks for the arrival of the freighter.

 Another major grain exporter, Cargill Inc. based in Minneapolis, also voiced optimism that U.S. sales to Cuba would expand in the future. Cargill has contracts to ship corn, wheat and soybean oil in January and February.

 ``This is good both for . . . U.S. farmers and the people of Cuba,'' said Van Yeutter, Cargill's international business development director.

 Excitement over the first shipment was high in New Orleans, a port that once profited from U.S. trade with Cuba prior to the 1959 revolution.

 ``It's going from a state, Louisiana, that lost approximately 5,000 port-related jobs from 1960 to 1963 as various stages of the embargo took effect,'' Kavulich said.

 Commodity brokers and anti-embargo advocates sought to spread the benefits of the $30 million in humanitarian trade with a number of Gulf of Mexico ports, grain and poultry vendors, and shipping lines as a way to build pressure to ease the embargo.

 ``There are a lot of people behind this,'' said Falk, the law professor. ``Because several U.S. ports are involved, and several companies involved, there's no way back to the farm. They've seen Par-ee.''

 A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, recently said the food sales are permitted as long as cash-strapped Cuba pays hard currency.

 ``The bottom line is there is no lifting of the embargo. There is no new era. Our concerns in Cuba are the same,'' he said.

 On Capitol Hill, senators debated language in an omnibus farm bill that would allow Cuba to buy U.S. agricultural products on credit, instead of just for cash.

 Opponents, such as Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, said the U.S. government should not soften trade terms with a nation that the Bush administration has labeled a
 sponsor of terrorism.

 ``The Cuban government does not pay its bills,'' added Sen. Jesse Helms, a North Carolina Republican.

 ``Why would any senator be eager for their home state businesses . . . to assume the risk of doing business with the Castro regime?''

 A farm state Democrat, Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, exhorted his colleagues: ``Don't use food as a weapon. That's what this issue is about.''

 He added: ``Those who govern in Cuba have never missed a meal because we don't sell food to Cuba.''

 A vote on the matter remained pending.

                                    © 2001