The U.S. State and Treasury departments turned down a request by 10 U.S. senators, including Arkansas' Blanche Lincoln, to hold a second U.S. food exhibition in Cuba because of the nation's "recent repressive actions."

The senators, including Lincoln, D-Ark., sent the departments a letter in July requesting a reversal of a June 2 decision that denied a license to hold a second round of food and healthcare exhibits in Cuba next year.

The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control cited Cuba's April imprisonment of government opponents and journalists and the executions of three men who had hijacked a passenger ferry in trying to flee the island.

U.S. companies have a different perspective on how to help Cuba's 11 million people. The island, just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, has moved up into the top 10 export markets for chicken, according to the USA Poultry & Egg Export Council.

A widely successful food and agribusiness exhibit in Cuba in September 2002 resulted in an extra $92 million in sales for U.S. businesses, including Arkansas rice and poultry companies, according to the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council.

The State Department said in an Aug. 13 letter to the senators made public this week that Cuba's government and U.S. foreign partners "could interpret licensing of another such fair as conveying a sense of normalcy and business as usual.

"Should the political situation improve, for example, by the regime releasing the unfairly imprisoned opposition members or otherwise indicating its interest in reform, we would be prepared to reconsider our views regarding these types of license requests."

The Treasury Department said, in its Sept. 11 letter to the senators made public this week, that it's not blocking trade with the island, where a 2000 law allows direct cash sales of U.S. food and medicine.

The agency said it will continue to consider issuing individual licenses, which usually last a year and allow company representatives to travel to Cuba to arrange food and healthcare sales. More than 100 licenses already have gone out in the past six months to companies, farmers, state farm bureaus and agriculture departments, Juan Zarate, deputy assistant secretary in the terrorist financing and financial crimes unit of the Treasury Department, said in the letter.

Original plans called for holding the U.S. Food and Agribusiness Exhibition originally in January. Last year's trade show in Havana attracted 291 companies and organizations, including Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc., Tyson Foods Inc. and Archer Daniels Midland Co. It was the first trade show of U.S. food and agriculture products since the 1959 Cuban revolution, which later resulted in an American trade embargo against the island.

Peter Nathan, president of PWN Exhibicon International LLC in Westport, Conn., which organized last year's trade show, said he was considering filing a lawsuit against OFAC. The agency authorized U.S. companies to participate in the 21st Havana International Trade Fair in Cuba next month while denying a permit to hold the second U.S. trade exhibit.

Taylor Griffin, a Treasury Department spokesman, said a license is in place for U.S. participation in internationally sponsored professional events, and the Havana trade exhibit probably falls into that category.

Dennis Hays, a Cuban expert returning to the private sector this month, supports the decision to deny a permit. Hays is the former executive vice president of The Cuban-American National Foundation in Washington, D. C., a group that opposes dealings with Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

"One of the problems we as Americans have is our sense of indignation only lasts a very short period of time," Hays said. "Here you have these horrendous actions in Cuba, which everyone rightly condemned. Yet, literally weeks later people are going hat in hand to Havana. Cuba will be a good market for Arkansas and other places when it's a prosperous democracy."

Others see the permit denial as part of the Bush administration's reply to the crackdown on the island this year. Washington overturned a Clinton-era policy earlier this year that allowed Americans to travel to Cuba for educational purposes.

"The applications to conduct a second U.S. food agribusiness exhibition and a second healthcare exhibition were the first casualties," said John S. Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council in New York. "The question is whether impacting lawful commercial activity is the appropriate tool to demonstrate that displeasure."

Since December 2001, U.S. companies have sold $268.6 million in products to Cuba, most of it in agriculture commodities.

U.S. poultry companies, including Springdale-based Tyson Foods, sold about $20 million in chicken this year to Cuba, Kavulich said. Rice companies, including Stuttgart-based Riceland Foods Inc., sold about $10 million in rice this year, he said.

"The U.S. will, as it was in 2002, be the single largest source of food and agricultural products to Cuba," Kavulich said. "Last year we represented approximately 20 percent of Cuba's food and agricultural imports. This year we may represent 35 to 40 percent."