HAVANA, Dec 15 (AFP) - A dispute over US Christmas tree lights and Cuban wargames added Wednesday to tensions between the rivals.
Cuba has demanded that the US mission in Havana take down Christmas decorations that highlight 75 opponents of Cuban President Fidel Castro who were rounded up last year.
Civilians and students meanwhile joined major military exercises with Cuba's army which the authorities say is a warning to the United States not to attempt an invasion.
But while the two governments wrangle a US delegation of lawmakers and businessman was to start negotiations here Wednesday on an estimated 100 million dollars of US food and agriculture sales to Cuba.
The Cuban government has demanded that the US mission take down Christmas decorations that highlight the 75 dissidents by putting a large neon "75" in a circle in the middle of the illuminations, the top US diplomat said.
But James Cason, head of the US special interests section in Havana, said late Tuesday that the mission had no intention of taking down the illuminations.
Cuba detained 75 dissidents and jailed them for up to 28 years in April of last year. Fourteen have since been released, but the United States says it wants to highlight Cuba's human rights record.
Cason said he was summoned to the foreign ministry on Monday.
"The Castro regime threatened this diplomatic mission with reprisals," said Cason. "They are doing this because of our unconditional support for the courageous struggle of Cuban society and the peaceful and democratic opposition."
The diplomat did not say what "consequences" were threatened if the display was not changed.
The dispute has erupted as Cuba stages its biggest military exercises since 1986.
In guardsmen's uniforms -- khaki trousers, blue shirt and black beret -- men and women missed their regular jobs to take up AK-47 machine guns in answer to the communist authorities' call for a strong stand.
At factories deemed strategic for defense, staff was reduced to skeleton levels to allow workers to join regional protection forces and peacetime defense production units.
The "Bastion 2004" exercises, which started Monday and run through Sunday, involve four million Cubans across the Caribbean nation of 11 million, according to Cuban officials.
Thousands of students were taken in buses and trucks to firing ranges outside the capital for training in handling heavy weaponry, mortars and anti-air batteries.
In order to receive higher education Cubans are required to do at least a year of military service.
"The only way to stop aggression is to make it abundantly clear that, in this case, Cuba will become from one end (of the island) to the other an enormous wasp's nest that no aggressor, however powerful, will be able to overcome," Defense Minister Raul Castro said Monday.
The United States has strongly denied any plan to attack the nation.
And a group of US lawmakers and businessmen was to start talks in Havana on Wednesday on supplying about 100 million dollars of food products to the cash-strapped nation, the state Alimport company announced.
Cuba has been the target of a US embargo since 1961, but since 1991 the US agriculture industry has been allowed to sell food to the communist nation after the US Congress permitted "humanitarian" sales.
Up to October, the cash only sales totalled 894 million dollars and were expected to pass one billion dollars by the end of the year, Alimport said.
According to US media reports, more than 165 US companies will be represented at the Havana talks and Senator Max Baucus, the senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, is expected to attend.
12/15/2004 18:06 GMT - AFP