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by Paul Davidson
The August 10th Granma International reports in an interview with Rev. Lucius Walker that next year's US/Cuba Friendshipment will be the largest ever.
Pastors for Peace are planning a caravan that will cross the US/Mexico border in late July 1998
with enough aid to fill a whole ship for Cuba.
Walker was one of the numerous international figures specially invited to Havana for the 14th World Festival of Youth and Students.
This will be a greatest test yet of the US government's ability to enforce its blockade on humanitarian aid to Cuba and also the most significant exercise of the constitutional right to travel since 840 young US delegates attended the recent youth festival in Havana without a government licence.
The last two caravans have exposed the government's lack of strategy to deal with this challenge, to diminish or to deter it. Solidarity activists in the US intend to press the advantage by inviting all those organisations who send aid to Cuba under licence to join this defiant stand and prove that, at least on the question of aid and travel, the current legislation is as arrogant as it is unenforcible.
An international appeal is going out to support the July caravan. There are already plans for a European delegation, an initiative set against the background of the EU's climbdown at the World Trade Organisation. This proposal was aired at a Youth Festival meeting in Havana where Walker explained to an audience of fifty european delegates the history and significance of the US-Cuba Friendshipment caravans.