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US Poised to Ease Cuba Embargo
The United States Senate has approved legislation easing some of the four-decades-old sanctions against Cuba.
Sales of food and medicine to the communist island would be allowed under the bill; it will now go before President Bill Clinton who has not threatened to veto it.
The Senate vote, carried 86-8, came on the same day as hundreds of thousands of people marched through the Cuban capital, Havana, protesting against any change to the US blockade.
Cuban President Fidel Castro says that restrictions linked to the measure would actually tighten the embargo, and Cuba has vowed not to buy any American goods.
Supporters, however, see the move as a symbolic first step towards a lifting of US sanctions, in force since 1962.
The BBC's Tom Carver in Washington says it is an important step in the gradual thawing of relations between the two countries.
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