Sunday, October 24, 1999 Published at 00:47 GMT 01:47 UK
US governor on Cuba mission
Mr Ryan is expected to meet Fidel Castro
The first US state governor to set foot in Cuba since Fidel Castro's 1959 Communist revolution has arrived in Havana for a five day visit.
Illinois Governor, George Ryan, said he came to build bridges and exchange ideas.
He also plans to donate $1m dollars in humanitarian aid.
The official Cuban newspaper Granma welcomed the visit as a sign of eroding support for the US economic embargo on the island, introduced in 1962.
On his arrival Mr Ryan quoted Abraham Lincoln: "The probability that we may fail in the struggle should not deter us from support of a cause that we believe to be just."
Mr Ryan and a growing band of US politicians are championing the easing of the US embargo against Cuba, at least sufficiently to allow US farmers and pharmaceutical companies to sell their products to the island.
The delegation includes representatives of two of the biggest US agricultural companies, as well as an Illinois-based pharmaceutical company.
"I don't think we should use the staples of life as a political weapon."
Cuba's Foreign Ministry has welcomed the visit as "a reflection of the growing rejection by different sectors of US society towards the current hostile policy and embargo against Cuba."
Anti-Castro groups in the US said he was lending credibility to Castro and a government responsible for rights abuses.
But Elizardo Sanchez, who heads the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, said the visit was in "the greater interests of the US and Cuban peoples" by promoting "better relations between both countries."