Testing Cuban Waters

After Russia, China and North Viet Nam, what Communist nation will be the next target of Richard Nixon's policy of detente? One obvious possibility is Cuba. Since the end of the November, the U.S., represented by Swiss diplomats in Havana and Washington, has been negotiating with Cuba to reach an agreement on hijackers.

The talks are the first serious discussions between the U.S. and Cuba since relations between the two countries were severed in 1961. Last week the Swiss ambassadors to Havana and Washington, Silvio Masnata and Felix Schnyder, met with Secretary of State William Rogers to deliver their personal progress reports. Said the normally cautious Schnyder: "I think there is a measure of mutual understanding very evident in this situation." Many Latin American diplomats and State Department officers are urging the White House to take advantage of the new atmosphere of cooperation and broaden the negotiations into other areas. So far, Nixon has resisted the notion, but a resolution of the hijacking problem alone would go a long way toward easing U.S.Cuban relations.

The current discussions with Cuba were prompted by two separate skyjackings to Havana last month--four whites seized an Eastern Airlines jet out of Houston (TIME, Nov. 13) and three blacks captured a Southern Airways plane from Birmingham (TIME, Nov. 27). Both groups arrived in Cuba expecting a welcome mat for "revolutionaries" from the mainland. Instead, they were thrown into jail and the $2,000,000 paid in ransom money by Southern Airways was confiscated as evidence for a future trial.

Worried that Cuba might be isolating itself from the rest of the international community, Castro apparently decided some time ago to erase his country's image as a haven for air pirates. Many skyjackers, particularly those with non-ideological motives, have been taken into custody and presumably tried in recent years. As one Hungarian diplomat put it: "Castro is a revolutionary, but he is no friend to criminals."

Indeed, it was Castro who called for the current negotiations, in the process tweaking the U.S. with the fact that Americans had accepted as refugees any and all Cubans who stole planes to reach the mainland during the early 1960s, and continue to look the other way when Cuban refugees "borrow" Cuban boats.

Piracy. At Cuba's insistence, the agreement now being shaped covers both airplanes and ships. The U.S. has been pressing for extradition or "severe" local punishment of hijackers. Cuba has agreed to "severe" local punishment but has not spelled out its view on extradition; up to now, it has always rejected U.S. pleas for extradition. For its part, the U.S. has agreed to punish severely Cuban refugees who commit piracy at sea or in the air, and to help prevent exile groups from creating "incidents" with Cuba.

That intention was put to the test almost as soon as it was expressed. Last week the U.S. Coast Guard towed into Key West, Fla., a 24-ft. Cuban fishing boat that had apparently been hijacked by three young Cubans. By week's end the U.S. had agreed to return to Cuba both the boat and its crew of two fishermen, who had apparently been coerced into taking the boat to the States. The three Cuban refugees will probably be prosecuted, but not turned over to Cuban authorities if further investigation determines that the boat was hijacked.

In order to prove its good faith and to underscore its demand that illegal emigrants be punished, Cuba recently informed the U.S. that 3,400 Cubans have been processed for legal departure to the U.S. In response, Washington announced that the refugee airlift, which has brought 265,000 Cubans into the U.S., would be resumed this week. The airlift was halted last May when Cuba announced that there were no more Cubans eligible to make the trip.

It all added up to the beginnings of a thaw in relations between the two countries. Even if the thaw continues, both sides would have to concede a good deal more before diplomatic relations could be resumed. For openers, Nixon would most likely have to lift the U.S. ban on imports of Cuban sugar, and Castro would have to ease up on exporting subversion to other Latin American countries.

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