President Barack Obama has signed a one-year extension of the law used to impose the trade embargo on Cuba, disappointing those who favored allowing the law to expire as a friendly nod to Havana while reassuring others who oppose easing the sanctions.

The extension of the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWTEA) was largely symbolic. While it was used by President John F. Kennedy as the legal basis for slapping the embargo on Havana, another law would have kept those sanctions in place even if Obama had not signed the extension.

Several groups that favor improved U.S. relations with Havana had urged Obama to allow TWTEA to expire as scheduled on Monday as a signal to the Cuban government that his administration was truly interested in rapprochement.

Sarah Stephens, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy in the Americas, said that although the extension was indeed symbolic, Obama had forfeited a chance to send a message to Havana and the rest of Latin America that he was removing one of the foundations for the U.S. embargo against Cuba.

``I am disappointed that President Obama has missed several opportunities to do things that may not get any attention here in the United States, but that would send a signal to the region,'' Stephens said in a telephone interview.

Supporters of sanctions against Cuba argued, however, that the extension confirmed that Obama is sticking by his promises to retain the trade embargo, while removing restrictions on Cuban Americans who want to travel to the island or send remittances to relatives there.

``People think he's a liar, but he's doing exactly what he has said -- changing travel and remittances but not the embargo,'' said Mauricio Claver-Carone, director of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee in Washington.

The extension is ``symbolic of the fact that the president supports the current policies,'' Claver-Carone added in a interview.

Obama signed the one-year extension on Sept. 11, three days before TWTEA was to expire on Monday. But the decision was not announced until Monday morning. There was no immediate explanation for the delay.

``I hereby determine that the continuation for one year of the exercise of those authorities with respect to Cuba is in the national interest of the United States,'' he wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

Adopted in 1917, TWTEA initially was applied to ``enemy countries'' only after a formal U.S. declaration of war. In 1963. President Kennedy used TWTEA against Cuba under a declaration of an ``international emergency.''

But in the 1970s, TWTEA was essentially overtaken by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. No new sanctions could be imposed under TWTEA, but Cuba was grandfathered in, Washington attorney Robert Muse, considered a leading expert on the legal structure and history the embargo, told El Nuevo Herald earlier this month.

The 1996 Helms-Burton measure essentially turned the embargo into law and set tough conditions for lifting it that amount to having a democratically elected Cuban government, Muse added.

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