SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE, Pg.B6

LENGTH: 205 words

HEADLINE: FORMER PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER VISITS CUBA

BODY:
He's not our man in Havana. . . .

But ex-president Jimmy Carter . . . is the first current or former president to visit Cuba in 74 years. He's his own man in Havana. And he really dislikes our country's Cuba policy. . . .

Nor is his own Cuba record spotless. His efforts in 1980 helped lead to a flood of more than 120,000 Cubans, many of them criminals, in the notorious Mariel boatlift.

But, even though Castro is a dictator and thug, Carter is right when it comes to our Cuba policy. While the embargo -- a creaky, drooling relic of the Cold War -- has trapped Cuba economically, it has also impoverished the Cuban on the street.

And it's hypocritical through and through, since we regularly play footsie with human-rights disasters Saudi Arabia and China. If Cuba had scads of oil, or a billion-plus entrepreneurs and consumers, its U.S. relations would be as sweet as Cuban coffee.

The real reason the Cuban embargo persists? Politics -- what else? Rich and powerful, the Cuban emigre community in Florida (about 800,000 strong) wants the United States to keep the screws on Fidel Castro. President after president, Republican and Democrat, has crumpled under this group's passionate political pressure.

LOAD-DATE: May 19, 2002