BY: CAPITOL HILL CUBANS
Fox News asks various U.S. Members of Congress about their dealings with former Castro regime business official, Pedro Alvarez, who defected from Cuba last month:
John Kavulich, a senior policy analyst at the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, told FoxNews.com that he has known Alvarez since 1997 and believes Alvarez is in the United States though he said he has not had any contact with him.
"Nor do I expect to," he said.
But Kavulich said Alvarez could embarrass several officials, including U.S. lawmakers, if he reveals the lengths that some of them went to win more business on the Caribbean island.
"He could, if he felt like it, and he believed it, he could make some politicians look like buffoons -- the U.S. lawmakers who went down there and was salivating all over them," Kavulich said.
But U.S. lawmakers who have met Alvarez during visits to Cuba said that any allegations of corruption involving Alvarez's dealings had no bearing on their talks.
"That's ridiculous," said Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., who told FoxNews.com that no sensitive or specific information was exchanged during meetings between Alvarez and U.S. lawmakers on the three occasions she traveled to Cuba with congressional delegations.
Members of the delegation simply made clear that they had a good product in the United States to offer, she said.
Emerson added that she was "shocked" to learn about his disappearance.
"He was always gracious and warm to us and to the group that was there," she said, adding that he worked with U.S. agricultural groups even more. "And so he had a lot of conversations and meetings with people from around the United States who were trying to sell to Cuba."
Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz, who met Alvarez when he led a bipartisan congressional delegation to Cuba in 2006, said neither he nor any of his fellow lawmakers have concerns about what Alvarez knows about their talks.
"I don't know what information he would have that would be sensitive for U.S. officials," he told FoxNews.com. "The trips I've taken, everyone was up-front -- they wanted more exports to Cuba."
At its peak in 2008, the U.S. exported more than $700 million in U.S. exports of crops, meat and farm products to Cuba, a 60 percent increase from the previous year, which made the U.S. Cuba's largest food provider at the time, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission.
But exports dropped by 24 percent in 2009 to $528 million, according to a report by the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. They continued to fall last year to $344.3 million through November, compared with $486.7 million for the same period in 2009 -- a 30 percent drop.
Kavulich cited political, economic and commercial reasons for the decline of U.S. exports to Cuba, including the Castro regime's pullback in its attempts to influence the U.S. political process, its lack of a foreign exchange and its trade agreements with other countries such Brazil, Argentina, and the financial assistance it receives from Venezuela and China.
Aides to other members of the 2006 delegation did not respond to requests for comment, including Reps. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., Jane Harman, D-Calif., Mike Conaway, R-Texas, and Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan.
A spokesman for Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., another member of the 2006 delegation, declined to comment.
"All that we know is what we've seen in the news, so we won't be having any comment at this time," McGovern spokesman Michael Mershon said in an e-mail to FoxNews.com.
An aide to Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee who introduced a bill last year that would have lifted the U.S. ban on travel to the island and ease payment restrictions on agricultural products to Cuba, did not respond to interview requests either. His bill never made it out of committee.
An aide to Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Iowa, who has said he knows Alvarez, didn't respond to a request for comment.
At a House Agriculture Committee meeting last March, Boswell told the presidents of the American Farm Bureau and National Farmers Union that he spent time with Alvarez in Cuba.
"I spent a lot of time with him," he said. "I spent quite a bit of time with Mr. Castro. Sometimes we would be entertained. I can tell you about that a little bit."
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