BY GEORGE GEDDA
 Associated Press

 WASHINGTON -- In a bid to help Americans understand the maze of rules and
 regulations governing travel to Cuba, the U.S. embargo against the island and
 related issues, the State Department unveiled a new Web site Monday focused
 exclusively on Cuba.

 The site is largely fact-based but also highlights, with the help of pictures, the
 shortcomings of the revolution in such areas as housing and transportation.

 Creating a Cuba site has been a challenge because of the complexity of the
 issues and because of the passions Cuba continues to generate even after 40
 years of communist rule.

 Visitors to the Web site can obtain information about human rights in Cuba, the
 administration's efforts to promote people-to-people contacts, U.S.-Cuban
 relations, migration, restrictions on the sale of medicine, labor practices on the
 island and details of 1996 legislation designed to assist Americans whose
 property was seized by the revolution.

 A State Department official, asking not to be identified, said the site ``is intended
 to clarify our policy.''

 State Department spokesman James P. Rubin offered a somewhat different
 rationale.

 ``We want to provide as much information as possible on crackdowns of
 dissidents, on information about the ways in which Castro has an embargo on his
 own people, so that people can't say they didn't know this or they didn't know that
 when they were meeting with the government in Cuba,'' he said.

 The unflattering pictures are coupled with policy clarifications. One picture
 showing rundown housing was accompanied by a caption that reads: ``Cuba's
 state-controlled economy has failed to provide adequate housing to Cubans.
 Multifamily occupancy of often unsafe housing is common.''

 A caption under a photo showing Cubans riding bicycles reads: ``As the
 transportation sector deteriorated, Cuba's love affair with the automobile was
 replaced by resignation to the bicycle.''

 Another section is devoted to four dissident leaders who were convicted earlier
 this year for sedition and acts against the security of the state.

 The Web site: www.state.gov/www/regions/wha/cuba/index.html