VIVA GUANTANAMO LIBRE

By J.F.O. McAllister/Washington

"I am appalled," thundered candidate Bill Clinton when he learned that George Bush would return all Haitian boat people, including political refugees fleeing for their lives, to the tender mercies of Haiti's military junta. "It is a blow to America's moral authority in defending the rights of refugees around the world." Last week President Clinton announced that he would extend the Bush approach to refugees from Cuba. It was the first time the U.S. has ever endorsed the forcible return of refugees to a communist country.

The deal, worked out in secret talks between senior U.S. and Cuban officials, infuriated anti-Castro activists in Miami and their supporters in Washington, and two veteran U.S. diplomats requested transfers off the Cuba desk. But in another turnaround, the agreement will also permit some 15,000 Cuban rafters now being housed at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo to come to the mainland, and some Cuba experts are hopeful that if Castro keeps his end of the bargain-mainly by not persecuting any rafters returned by the U.S. Coast Guard in the future-the icy relations between Havana and Washington might begin to thaw.

The Administration claims its motivations are compassion and practicality. About 6,000 Cubans at Guantanamo, mostly women, children and elderly, have already received permission to enter the U.S. on humanitarian grounds. The remaining 15,000, mostly young men, were facing indefinite detention-a good recipe for riots. welcome to hell, said a sign scrawled on a tent at Guantanamo last week, while inside six sweaty and bored young men lolled on olive-drab cots. Only days after the announcement, they were no longer jubilant, realizing it could still take months for them to reach the U.S.

But Clinton is painfully aware of the mischief the detainees could make if they had no hope at all. Riots by Cuban refugees held at Fort Chaffee in Arkansas helped cost him re-election as governor in 1980. "The decision was driven by the Pentagon saying, 'This costs us a million dollars a day, and it's going to be a disaster come summer,'" explained a senior White House official.

Others detected more political calculation. "Clinton is obsessed by Florida," says a former senior official. In 1992 he campaigned there only once and spent no money on ads, but a switch of only 50,066 votes from Bush to Clinton would have won him the state. Clinton has been wooing Floridians with regular visits, a vow to protect Social Security and Medicare and old-fashioned political patronage, like the recent announcement of the move of the U.S. Southern Command's headquarters from Panama to south Dade County.

Until last week, placating Miami's rich, powerful and ferociously anti-Castro Cuban-American community was another piece of the Florida strategy, even though it votes overwhelmingly Republican. During his 1992 campaign Clinton backed a law that toughened the U.S. embargo on Castro. Last year he consulted with Cuban Americans closely before shunting the Cuban rafters to Guantanamo. But Clinton knows that Cuban Americans will be a lost cause in 1996. At the same time, recent polls, some commissioned by the White House, promise more Florida votes from being tough on immigrants than on Castro.

The new plan got the backing of Florida's most important Democrats, Governor Lawton Chiles and Senator Bob Graham, but Republican Senator Jesse Helms, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, blasted Clinton for helping to "keep the Cuban people imprisoned in Castro's tropical Gulag." Officials evaded the question of whether even those who reasonably fear for their lives will be repatriated. "If someone asserts that kind of claim, and is taken back, they're going to get very special treatment" from the 37 U.S. diplomats in Havana, said one senior official. The official stresses that Castro's secret police have not harassed Cubans who have applied for the 20,000 annual departure slots that Washington and Havana agreed to last September. Critics say the U.S. could have squeezed more out of Castro-by insisting that Amnesty International or some other human rights group be allowed to monitor conditions on the island, for example. The U.S. made that demand during the secret talks, but dropped it to get a deal.

The Clinton Administration is also on the verge of allowing broader contacts with Cuba in ways that are consistent with the existing embargo law. U.S. news organizations may be allowed to open bureaus there, for example, and humanitarian groups that work in Cuba may be permitted to receive dollars.

Republicans in Congress regard that approach as hopelessly naive. Some plan legislation that would prevent the Administration from returning refugees to Cuba. Senator Helms and others want to toughen the embargo still further, in part by denying U.S. entry visas to the executives and shareholders of many foreign companies legally doing business in Cuba. That bill is almost certain to pass in some form. But officials say Clinton is likely to veto it-one more sign that the Miami Cubans have lost their friend in the White House. --With reporting by James Carney and Michael Duffy/Washington and Tammerlin Drummond/Guantanamo

With reporting by JAMES CARNEY AND MICHAEL DUFFY/ WASHINGTON AND TAMMERLIN DRUMMOND/GUANTANAMO