WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama signed an order yesterday extending the law used to impose the US trade embargo on Cuba, despite calls by embargo opponents to follow up his easing of sanctions on the communist-ruled island by letting it lapse. “The President has determined that it is in the national interest of the United States to continue for one year the exercise of certain authorities under the Trading With the Enemy Act with respect to Cuba,” the White House said.Obama announced in April that he would ease the trade restrictions, imposed on Cuba nearly half a century ago after Fidel Castro’s Communist revolution. Early this month, Washington fleshed out that order. Among other changes, the Treasury Department said it would allow Americans with relatives in Cuba to send them unlimited cash and to visit the island as long and as often as they like. The rights group Amnesty International had called on Obama not to sign the extension, saying the embargo interferes with Cubans’ human right to health as enshrined in UN covenants.

The US Helms-Burton law, passed in 1996, would have kept the sanctions in place even if Obama had not signed the extension, but embargo opponents had hoped Obama would decline to sign as a symbolic gesture.

Advocates of lifting the embargo say it has not harmed Cuba’s government and it has caused economic hardship to the Cuban people.

US presidents have signed one-year extensions of the law since the 1970s. Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, signed the last extension on September 12, 2008.