Cuba, once one of the world's largest sugar exporters, now might import the commodity from the United States as it slowly turns its old plantations into farmland.

The Communist Party daily Granma reported Friday that Sugar Minister Ulises Rosales del Toro said that about one million hectares of sugar cane land are being turned over to production of food or to forestry.

The report comes at the same time that Cuba's state import company, Alimport, said it is considering an offer by PS International, an agricultural trading company based in Chapel Hill, N.C., to sell U.S. sugar.

"If U.S. producers want to sell us sugar and the price is right, why can't we buy it?" Alimport director Pedro Alvarez said this week.

He confirmed on Friday that talks were still underway.

Wayne Carrick, an international trader for PS International who was attending the Havana International Trade Fair here, said Friday that negotiations were still going on for the possible sale of 5,000 to 15,000 tonnes of sugar. He said a deal might be reached within a few weeks.

Sugar was long a dominant force in the Cuban economy and an obsession among Cuban officials both before and after the 1959 revolution led by Fidel Castro.

One of the first punitive measures imposed by the United States after the revolution was to cut its imports.

While the Helms-Burton law makes most trade with Cuba illegal, reform provisions do permit licensed American companies to export food and agricultural products to the Communist country.

Production of six million to seven million tonnes of sugar year was once common in Cuba, but harvests have been declining over the past decade and the collapse of the Soviet Union took away the most lucrative market.