7-02-06,10:01am

Havana, July 1 (Prensa Latina).- Members of the 17th Friendship Caravan with Cuba will arrive in Havana on July 8, after travelling across 14 different US routes, condemning the immoral and cruel blockade of the Island and collecting humanitarian aid for Cubans.

The Caravanistas are from the US, Canada and other nations, part of a project fostered by the New York-based Inter-religious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO) Pastor for Peace, chaired by Reverend Lucius Walker.

They visited 125 US and Canadian cities and communities to condemn the over four-decade economic blockade of Cuba that uses hunger and diseases as political weapons against the Cuban population.

Upon arrival in Havana, they will be welcomed at the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, to meet with families of the five Cuban people unfairly imprisoned in the US for fighting terrorism.

Their agenda includes visits to western provinces and talks with students of the Latin American School of Medicine, where thousands of economically youth from the Third World are studying.

They will also meet with Cuban ophthalmology experts and patients with eye afflictions to be operated on free of charge under the Operation Miracle spearheaded by Cuba and Venezuela.

More than 70 percent of the Cuban population has been siege by the US blockade, a policy that has been overwhelmingly and continuously condemned at the UN General Assembly. Its damage to the Cuban economy amounts to 82 billion dollars in 47 years.