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NEWSDAY 02/15/2001 - Thursday - Page A 56 East Hampton May Get A Sister City in Cuba
by Bill Bleyer Staff Writer

East Hampton is one of the most exclusive waterfront towns on the planet.

And La Playa is a mostly upscale enclave of beaches, marinas, universities, embassies and shops on the outskirts of Havana.

Officials in Cuba and East Hampton believe the two communities have so much in common that they should become sister cities.

Two East Hampton officials, Supervisor Jay Schneiderman and Town Board member Diana Weir, the board's first Hispanic, will fly to the island Wednesday for a 10-day visit to scope out La Playa as a potential mate. This would be the first time a New York community has had a sister city with a Cuban municipality under a worldwide cultural exchange program established by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Jose Luis Noa of the Cuban Interest Section in Washington, which functions like an embassy because there are no formal diplomatic relations between the two countries, attended an East Hampton town board meeting in December to make a pitch for sisterhood.

"It's a people-to-people cultural exchange," Noa said afterward, and it has nothing to do with the Communist government of Fidel Castro, which the United States does not recognize and has tried to undermine for a half century.

Schneiderman said the trip and a sibling relationship shouldn't pose any political problems for him or Weir, who were elected on the Republican line. "I don't think us going to Cuba says we support the Cuban government," he said.

"What it does say is that we support the Cuban people.

La Playa, a precinct of Havana, has a population of 132,000. East Hampton has about 18,000 year-round residents and the summer influx boosts that to about 50,000.

La Playa also incorporates Miramar, a trendy neighborhod where embassies are located, as well as an impoverished area. The East End town also has some less affluent sections and a growing Hispanic population.

The idea of participating in the sister city program came from resident Luly Duke, founder of Fundacion Amistad, or Friendship Foundation. The Cuba native established it four years ago to sponsor exchange programs in education, science, medicine and the arts and to provide humanitarian aid.

Some of that aid has come from Amagansett bar owner Peter Honerkamp, the foundation's secretary, and his Maidstoners softball team, which began visiting Cuba to play exhibition games two years ago and has been delivering sports equipment to Cuban youth leagues and medical supplies to Cuban clinics.

"It will make another bridge with Cuba," Duke said of the sister-city relationship. "We hope this would lead to normalization of relations."

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