State Department unveiling Cuba Web site.

In a bid to help Americans understand the maze of rules and regulations governing travel to Cuba, the U.S. embargo against the island and related issues, the State Department is unveiling a new Web site focused exclusively on Cuba. The Web site, ready to go on line today after highly secretive preparations, is largely fact-based but also highlights, with the help of pictures, the shortcomings of the revolution in such areas as housing and transportation. The State Department has many other Web sites devoted to individual countries. But creating a Cuba site has been more of a challenge than most because of the complexity of the issues and because of the passions Cuba continues to generate even after 40 years of communist rule.Visitors to the Web site can obtain information about human rights in Cuba, the administration_s efforts to promote people-to-people contacts, U.S.-Cuban relations, migration, restrictions on the sale of medicine, labor practices on the island and details of 1996 legislation designed to assist Americans whose property was seized by the revolution without compensation. "This is not at all intended to be an affront," said a State Department official, asking not to be identified. "It is intended to clarify our policy." But coupled with policy clarifications are the unflattering pictures. One picture showing rundown housing was accompanied by a caption that reads: "Cuba_s state-controlled economy has failed to provide adequate housing to Cubans. Multi-family occupancy of often unsafe housing is common." Another section of the Web site is devoted to four dissident leaders who were convicted earlier this year for sedition and acts against the security of the state. The four are widely portrayed internationally as victims of repression.