BY ALAN SAYRE
 Associated Press

 NEW ORLEANS -- Carrying 24,000 tons of corn for hurricane relief, a freight ship left New Orleans Friday with the first commercial export of U.S. food to Cuba since 1963.  U.S. officials voiced hope that the shipment would boost the negligible amount of trade between the two nations.

 "This is a bridge we need to build,'' said Illinois Gov. George Ryan, whose state produced some of the corn. "Corn is forming a bridge today that we need to build with the people of Cuba.''

 But an anti-Castro group said the shipment would be used as a wedge to end the United States' four-decade trade embargo against the communist nation and allow Cuba to "export terrorism'' to the United States.

 George J. Fowler III, general counsel of the pro-embargo Cuban American National Foundation, said his group favored humanitarian shipments meant to replenish Cuba's reserves lost in last month's Hurricane Michelle.

 But Fowler asked why, if the current shipment is so vital, the freighter took a 20-hour stop in New Orleans for a news conference.

 ``This press conference is about a show about lifting the embargo,'' Fowler said at the port.

 ``Cuba is a terrorist nation,'' Fowler said. Unrestricted trade with Cuba, he said, will ``put money in Castro's pocket, since he owns everything, to export his revolution and terrorism to the detriment of the United States.''

 The freighter M.V. Ikan Mazatlan was loaded at an Archer Daniels Midland port a few miles up the Mississippi River and brought to New Orleans Thursday. It left shortly after Friday's ceremony for a two-day voyage to Havana.

 A shipment of frozen chickens to Cuba is expected to depart later this month. Archer Daniels Midland was contracted to deliver to Cuba 96,000 metric tons of food items, including corn, soybean meal, wheat and rice, through February.

                                    © 2001