Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 22, 1994 TAG: 9408220108
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By GEORGE de LAMA CHICAGO TRIBUNE
DATELINE: KEY WEST, FLA. LENGTH: Long
But instead of capitalizing on growing political sentiment in the United States to ease the long-standing economic embargo against Cuba, Castro instead finds himself a new member of President Clinton's international ``Most Wanted'' club.
Clinton's tough new measures against Cuba have elevated Castro alongside Haitian strongman Raul Cedras on the list of endangered leaders the White House would like to shove off the international stage.
Placing the United States on a collision course with Castro, the White House signaled Sunday that Clinton would consider a naval blockade of the island unless Cuba embraces fundamental political and economic reform.
``That's obviously one of the options that we would look at in the future as we see whether or not Castro begins to make some legitimate movements toward democracy,'' White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta said Sunday in an ABC TV interview.
Few inside the Clinton administration believe Castro will allow democracy to bloom in Cuba. Yet not even at the height of U.S.-Cuban tensions during the Reagan presidency did the United States publicly threaten a blockade, an action last seen during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Panetta's remarks came in the wake of Clinton's moves to thwart an exodus of Cuban boat people to Florida by detaining illegal migrants and sending those caught at sea to the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba's southeast coast.
Clinton also prohibited the sending of money to relatives in Cuba by exiles and ordered an end to nearly all charter flights to Cuba. Rather than ease the U.S. embargo against Cuba, Clinton strengthened it, moving to deprive Castro of a major source of hard currency.
So far the new Clinton stance hasn't stanched the flow of refugees. The Coast Guard plucked 1,189 Cubans from the Florida Straits on Saturday, the most in a day since the 1980 Mariel boatlift, and another 678 as of Sunday afternoon.
About 500 refugees were being detained at the Krome Detention Center west of Miami. More than 1,900 others were reported at sea on Coast Guard ships or en route to Guantanamo.
Panetta's mention of a possible blockade may have been intended more for political consumption in Miami's influential Cuban-American community than as a serious threat aimed at Castro. Cuban officials long have warned they would consider a blockade an act of war.
Unlike the case in Haiti, the United States would have little support in the United Nations for a military blockade of Cuba and could expect an international outcry in Latin America and Europe against such a move.
And even with his economy reeling, a cornered Castro still could bloody the United States' nose and cause substantial U.S. casualties in any military confrontation, particularly one he would seek to portray as coming in defense of Cuba against Yankee aggression.
``History shows that's exactly what Fidel Castro wants,'' said Maria Christina Herrera, founder of the Institute of Cuban Studies, a moderate exile organization in Miami. ``He would love nothing better than to go down in history as fighting off the Americans surrounding Cuba.
``Castro is not [deposed Panamanian leader Manuel] Noriega or Cedras, and Cuba is not Panama. It remains to be seen if the United States will be willing to risk its soldiers' blood being spilled in Cuba, because it will not be five or six casualties, it will be many,'' Herrera said.
Still, after Castro fell from most Americans' attention since the end of the Cold War, Clinton willingly has taken on the Cuban leader as a long-term foreign policy problem.
``Successive governments of the United States have been bent on destroying the Cuban revolution for 35 years. I don't think the present government is an exception,'' said Abelardo Moreno, Cuba's minister-counselor at the United Nations.
So far Clinton's tough talk and moves against Castro have been welcomed by Florida political leaders and most Cuban-Americans in Miami, despite fears the measures will increase the misery of many Cubans on the island.
But some warn that the new policy might backfire. ``What are they going to do when they fill up Guantanamo?'' said Herrera. ``And what do they do if Castro deactivates the mine fields [outside the base] and opens the doors and tells all Cubans who want to leave that they can walk into Guantanamo, stirring up a royal row just as he would love to do?''
Elsewhere, a growing number of analysts called for Clinton's hard-line steps to be followed by U.S. incentives aimed at encouraging a peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba.
``Cuba is at a critical turning point,'' wrote Gillian Gunn, a Cuba specialist at George Washington University who recently returned from a two-week trip to the island, in the Sunday Washington Post. ``It is more important than ever that U.S. policy be carefully calibrated to nudge the leadership in a peaceful, rather than an apocalyptic direction,'' she wrote.
Bernard Aronson, former assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs during the Bush administration, has advocated replacing the paralyzing policy debate over the merits of the U.S. embargo with a carrot-and-stick approach.
It would include U.S. promises to withdraw from its base at Guantanamo, a pledge not to intervene militarily in Cuba and a gradual easing of the trade ban in return for specific economic and political reforms on the island.
by CNB