by Our Foreign Desk

THE Republican-controlled US House of Representatives put itself at odds with the White House on Thursday, voting in favour of reinstating the ban on travel to Cuba.

Representatives voted 247-176 to keep a clause in a transport Bill that would reverse President Barack Obama’s January decision to ease restrictions on travel to Cuba.

Mr Obama lifted the requirement that US travellers obtain a licence from the Treasury Department before traveling to the socialist island.

Instead, US visitors to Cuba currently only have to state that their trip would serve educational, religious or other permitted purposes.

The new clause was proposed by Republican representative Mario Diaz-Balart, a Cuban American from the Miami area of Florida.

Mr Diaz-Balart objected to lifting the travel ban on the basis that flights might land at an airport that was partially owned by US interests before the 1959 Cuban revolution.

“What you are saying is: ‘It’s OK to do business on property that was stolen from Americans’,” he claimed.

If enacted, the provision would not affect new rules allowing limited imports from Cuba.

The vote came on the same day that Cuba was removed from the US list of state sponsors of terror after the deadline for a congressional challenge expired last Friday.

Havana calculates that the 55-year US blockade of Cuba, along with sabotage and terrorism by Florida-based groups, has cost the country some £720 billion in lost trade and other costs.

Most Democratic and a handful of Republican representatives view the draconian travel restrictions, which can carry a fine for unauthorised travel, as a cold war relic.

Democrat Barbara Lee, who tried unsuccessfully to amend the Bill to remove Mr Diaz-Balart’s clause, said: “We need a 21st-century approach to this nation 90 miles away from our shores. This is 2015, not 1960.

“The rest of the world is doing business with Cuba, allows its citizens to travel to Cuba and also has normal diplomatic relations with Cuba.”

The White House has threatened to veto the Bill, partly because of the Cuba-related provision and Democrats in the Senate vowed to delay the measure.