The Line Starts Now

By Bruce W. Nelan

Fidel Castro's envoys did their best to slide his main complaint across the bargaining table, but the U.S. negotiators slid it right back. After seven days of talks in New York City, the Cubans had to settle for what the Americans offered in the first place: a narrow agreement on immigration. They got nowhere on the issue that Castro blames most for his economic problems: the 32-year-old U.S. trade embargo. The deal sealed in New York last Friday amounted to a simple swap: the U.S. will take in at least 20,000 legal Cuban immigrants each year, and Havana will halt the wave of boats and rafts that have carried 35,000 would-be refugees north from its beaches this year.

The arrangement will please Cubans who have close relatives among the exiles in Florida and who are willing to drop by the U.S. Interests Section office in Havana to apply for emigration. The big losers are the 25,000 Cubans who risked their lives at sea only to wind up in tents at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station or in Panama. They cannot apply unless they return to Havana.

Under the new agreement, Castro says he will take back "those Cubans who have recently left and wish to return," and he promises not to punish them. Some of the rafters in the "safe havens" will try to get to the U.S. by that route, but others will not. Attorney General Janet Reno says those who choose not to go back to Cuba will be held at Guantanamo "indefinitely." That is a harsh ruling but an unavoidable one. If the naval station were to become a processing point for entry to the U.S., another wave of emigres would head straight for it.

As the number of rafters began to slow last week, the Cubans apparently decided they now had more to gain by coming to terms with Washington. But in accepting this narrowly focused solution, Castro seems to have settled for very little. Why would he agree to something that does not even mention the hated embargo? Did he get some unspoken understanding on that score? Apparently not, but he did win some points. He took a step toward better relations with the U.S. He received an immigration package that gives him some say about who can leave his island and, at the same time, removes much of the incentive for Cubans to hijack ships and planes to head for the U.S. Whether or not Washington says so, Castro must believe other agreements will be possible.

Details of this one reached Havana just as a swirling rainstorm sent pedestrians scurrying for shelter in doorways along the seaside Malecon. They thought the 20,000 figure was far too low. "One million, maybe 5 million people want to go to the U.S.," said a young woman, "but they keep changing the rules on us."

Castro agreed to use "mainly persuasive methods" to stop his citizens from fleeing. The U.S. will now accept at least 20,000 yearly, plus about 6,000 more from a backlog of Cubans who are waiting to receive visas that have been approved. To get these visas, everyone must appear at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.

Castro can identify several promising elements in the way the talks turned out. To begin with, he achieves a long-term safety valve for shipping off malcontents. While he did not succeed in getting his call to lift the embargo on the table in New York, his request has landed on the American national agenda in a far more prominent place than before. Important congressional leaders such as Democrats Claiborne Pell and Lee Hamilton, chairmen respectively of the Senate and House Foreign Relations committees, were calling last week for "lifting the embargo in stages." Sanctions have failed to bring democracy to Cuba, they said, and urged "an invasion of people, ideas and information" instead.

Pell and Hamilton are borrowing the theory that detente rather than confrontation proved more destructive of dictatorships in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The despairing Cuban rafters talk about freedom, but mostly they are giving up on a system that cannot provide for their basic needs and shows no signs of ever being able to do so. After a difficult summer -- the sugar crop was a disaster, hotels are averaging 30% to 40% occupancy -- the government appears to be in disarray. Castro made three television appearances in rapid succession last month but has not been seen on television since Aug. 24. He seems to be trying to buy himself time rather than making hard decisions.

* Cuba's biggest problem right now is cash: for consumer goods, fuel, farming equipment, factories. Castro is looking abroad for rapid investment, especially to the U.S. and the prosperous Cuban community in Florida. To get his hands on some of that money, he must persuade Washington to drop the trade embargo and other economic sanctions. The rush of investment, trade, cultural exchanges and tourism into Cuba would provide a powerful boost, obviating at least for a while the need to undertake political and free-market reforms.

Cubans may assume that the embargo question can be revisited after the November congressional elections if the refugees are controlled as promised. U.S. officials say that is not true. They say their only promise, direct or implied, is Secretary of State Warren Christopher's public pledge to make a "calibrated" response to any Cuban moves toward democracy, free-market economics and human-rights improvements. Privately, U.S. officials explain they "don't want to get into a 'do this for us now, we'll do that for you later' arrangement." But, says one official, "if they start implementing reforms, that's something we can respond to."

The central question is whether Castro has any such intentions. He seems ever more isolated, surrounded by cronies, unable or unwilling to change the Marxist ideology at the core of his beliefs. "He understands the need to change," says Wayne Smith, a former head of the U.S. Interests Section, "but his heart is with the hard-liners." Those reforms he has introduced have been small and grudging or, as in the case of permitting U.S. dollars to circulate, disruptive to Cuban society by creating new groups of haves and have-nots. "He has a visceral feeling against markets and political freedom," says a U.S. official.

Yet Castro may have to proceed with some limited reforms to keep the dialogue with Washington open. American officials are hearing reports that Castro will soon announce a plan to create markets linking agricultural cooperatives and customers in the cities. He may also choose to dress up the decision he has already made to invite the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit Cuba. "These types of things might lead to some response from us," says an Administration official.

Ending the embargo is still Castro's Plan A. The rafters were a way of forcing Clinton to look again at the sanctions. Another was last week's carefully orchestrated conferences in Madrid between Cuban Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina and three leaders of the Cuban opposition based in Miami. The three -- Ramon Cernuda, Alfredo Duran and Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo -- are all considered moderates in the world of Cuban exile politics, and all strongly favor lifting the U.S. embargo.

"The admission that there is a legal opposition and they are interested in talking to us," said Cernuda, "is a first step in the right direction." Nevertheless, the three exiles reported that nothing had been agreed upon, except that there would be more talks. That is not surprising. If Castro is a reluctant economic reformer, he is almost totally opposed to allowing any political opposition inside Cuba. In the past month, 30 human-rights activists have been imprisoned, according to Elizardo Sanchez, a Cuban dissident who heads a coalition of rights groups. Since Aug. 5, when Cubans shouted "Down with Castro!" on the Havana waterfront, Sanchez says, 300 people have been detained and sent to labor camps.

American experts, unable to discern Castro's plan, wonder whether his fate will turn out to be like that of China's Deng Xiaoping or East Germany's Erich Honecker. Deng produced prosperity by pushing through liberal economic reforms while holding tight to hard-line communist political control. Honecker denied the need for reform and was swept away by a vast national upheaval. Castro probably identifies more closely with Deng, who succeeded while remaining a communist. But Castro is striving to avoid basic reforms, making it more likely that he could end up like Honecker, a diehard and a failure.

With reporting by Cathy Booth/Havana and J.F.O. McAllister/Washington