Japan Sees Rising Business Interest in Cuba with Thaw

Japanese business interest in Cuba is likely to intensify because of the thaw in U.S.-Cuban relations, Japan's foreign minister said in an interview published Thursday as he arrived for a visit.

Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida's stay is scheduled to include a meeting with his Cuban counterpart Bruno Rodriguez.

Kishida said Japan "supports and welcomes" the start of negotiations between Washington and Havana on restoring relations after decades of enmity. He said this thaw would "positively influence relations with Japan."

"Taking into account the improvement in relations between Cuba and the United States, not only the government but Japanese companies will further increase the interest in Cuba," he said in the interview with Granma, the official Communist Party newspaper.

For now, it is hard for Japanese companies to do business with Cuba because in doing so they face the prospect of sanctions from the United States under the U.S. trade embargo imposed in 1962, said Ken Okaniwa, the foreign minister's spokesman.

Okaniwa said bilateral trade now stands at just 35 million dollars a year, two thirds of it Japanese sales to Cuba.

Cuba exports tobacco, coffee and fish to Japan, and mainly buys Japanese machinery, he added.

Cuba has been actively courting foreign investment to spur the island's growth, which has remained sluggish despite reforms aimed at a gradual opening of the economy after decades of Soviet-style policies.

In the most dramatic development to date, Cuba's President Raul Castro and U.S. President Barack Obama announced on December 17 they would open talks to restore diplomatic relations severed more than 50 years ago.

The United States has since eased some travel and trade restrictions, but lifting the U.S. embargo requires action by the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress.

Cuba has long blamed the embargo for its economic ills.