U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts voiced opposition to President Bush’s hard-line policy with Cuba and said Bush’s refusal to open trade with the communist country was politically motivated.

The comments from Roberts, R-Kan., about trade with Cuba came at a recent Statehouse news conference in which he spoke of ways to help Kansas farmers hit hard by drought and depressed prices.

He said lifting the 40-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba would open the country to Kansas agricultural products.

A majority in Congress wants to lift the embargo, Roberts said, but Bush has threatened to veto such a proposal and has spoken harshly of Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

“Quite frankly, there is a situation in Florida that I think this November is absolutely primary on the president’s mind,” Roberts said.

Bush’s brother Jeb is running for re-election as governor in Florida in the November election. Florida’s Cuban-American population, which is generally fiercely anti-Castro, is seen as key to winning that race.

Roberts added that President Bush “has a very strong personal belief in regards to Fidel Castro.”

But Roberts, a member of the Senate armed services and intelligence committees, said Castro was not a security threat.

Roberts said opening Cuba to the U.S. economy would hasten Castro’s downfall.

“I don’t think Castro would last six months if we opened up trade and travel,” Roberts said.

Roberts said any move by Bush toward softening relations with Cuba probably would be delayed until after the November elections.

Democrats also have been critical of Bush’s Cuba policy, but the president has denied that politics has a role in his stance.

In a speech in May to 6,000 Cuban-Americans in Miami, Bush called Castro a “tyrant” and “relic from another era.”

Bush said he would consider softening his stand on Cuba if Castro took steps toward free elections and human rights improvements.

But opponents of the trade and travel bans said the restrictions had been ineffective and worsened conditions for people living in Cuba. And they said Bush’s conditions placed on thawing relations simply would continue the stalemate between the two nations.

Despite the embargo, a U.S. law that went into effect in 2000 made it possible for American producers to sell food directly to the island. However, the law prohibits U.S. public or private financing for the sales. something Cuba finds objectionable.

The new law resulted in $12 million worth of wheat sales by Archer Daniels Midland and Farmland Industries to Cuba earlier this year.