SECTION: SUNDAY CHRONICLE; Pg. WB6; NOTES FROM HERE AND THERE

LENGTH: 1146 words

HEADLINE: NOTES FROM HERE AND THERE

BYLINE: Lewis Dolinsky

BODY:
ON HIS WAY OUT of the Bay Area, Dennis Hays, executive vice president of the Cuban American National Foundation, phoned and left this message:

"Everywhere else, everyone starts with the understanding that Castro is a thug and a slug, and you move from there (to) what we should do about that. Here, a substantial segment of the population still believes in the myth of the revolution. Logic and truth don't seem to make much impact. It's like discovering a city where everyone thinks Elvis is still alive."

Welcome to San Francisco. Hays had appeared on a panel on Cuba at the World Affairs Council. The best one can say about his reception is that he was not lynched, except intellectually. He posed a choice between freedom and tyranny, and the audience seemed to prefer tyranny. Hays indirectly likened Castro to the Fascist dictator Mussolini and said tourists who spend money in Cuba are unwitting collaborators in a regime that denies basic human rights, brutalizes dissidents, practices racial discrimination (unlike the rest of the hemisphere), lacks environmental controls and true labor unions and has rampant corruption. The next day, in a Chronicle interview, Hays asserted that Castro is responsible for 120,000 deaths. In that total, he included people like Elian Gonzalez's mother, who tried to reach Florida in a defective boat.

How many Cubans in the past 10 years have been been executed for political reasons? "Hundreds," Hays said. (Human Rights Watch says zero "as far as we know," and that group considers the Castro regime the most repressive in the hemisphere.)

Hays became the spokesman for the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), the dominant voice of the anti-Castro lobby, last July, a day after ending his 24-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service. His last job was ambassador to Suriname. In 1995, he gave up the position of Cuba policy coordinator because the Clinton administration agreed to repatriate any Cubans it could stop from reaching U.S. soil.

CANF knew what it was getting: someone who could put a friendly Anglo face on its hard-line policy, someone who shared its views but could give them without ranting. CANF's public relations in the Elian case had been a disaster.

Hays asserts that the 40-year economic embargo of Cuba is justified because anything good that comes to the island will be misused by the regime or help strengthen it for the transition after Castro dies. We should not sell Cubans food or medicine, Hays said, but we will give it to them if we, not Castro, can control distribution.

Hays was reminded that earlier U.S. conditions for ending the embargo have been met: Cuban troops are out of Angola; Cuba is no longer fomenting revolution in Latin America; Cuba is no longer a Soviet satellite. His response: We do not know what mischief Castro would carry out if he were able. Is it any coincidence that Latin America has become much more democratic since he was forced to back off?

Hays said that in our drive to make Cuba free and democratic, we should adopt an offensive strategy - donating fax machines and wireless communication devices, giving direct aid to Cubans at home and "training" abroad. (This program may not be as benign as it sounds.)

Asked why we should single out Cuba when there are imperfect regimes all over, Hays said we shouldn't: Our policy and our ideals should be consistent. So we should stop trade with China and Vietnam and Saudi Arabia? No. Then what country should we treat like Cuba, other than the obvious pariah states? He suggested Zimbabwe and Tajikistan. Maybe.

Hays provided Canadian opinion pieces chiding their government for being "chummy" with Castro without gaining any improvement in human rights on the island. Relevant passages were marked. Unmarked were sentences saying that the U.S. embargo has not worked and that Canada should not copy it.

Cut to the Chase

The question that Hays did not answer satisfactorily is why the Cuban people should suffer because they have a regime we don't like but that does us no harm. Other sources with experience in Cuba and Washington will give answers, but not necessarily for attribution.

Of Castro, they say: The Cuban people are tired of him and his controls - 40 years is a long time - but they will support him if he continues to give them the best possible free universal education and medical care, and keeps Cuba free of U.S. interference, which even the dissidents and priests do not want. This is the Cuban social contract; it exists even though there are no multiparty elections. Cubans are conservative; they don't want upheaval. They also don't want the Miami Cubans taking over. They do want their financial help and expertise.

In the meantime, Cuban Americans put the fear of God in any U.S. business that does even (legal) reconnaissance in Cuba. This is not a conspiracy; Cuban Americans feel they have a God-given right to that market, and they will stifle it until they can come in and pick up the pieces.

Europeans and Canadians are positioning themselves in Cuba. The payoff will come when being 90 miles from the United States is a blessing rather than a curse, and Cuba with its well-educated 11 million people is the dominant economic force in the Caribbean.

But for now, Cuba policy is treated as domestic policy, controlled by the White House and the Cuba lobby, not the State Department. No one is interested in contrary information from U.S. officials on the ground in Cuba - what would you do with it? Any blasphemy, any new thinking would be leaked. The Miami Cubans just proved they can swing a presidential election and, unlike the Israel lobby or the Armenia lobby, there is no counterbalance.

Because there is no "thinking outside the box," the United States is left unprepared for a nightmare scenario: Castro dies, and Cuban Americans cross the strait in boats and planes. The uprising against Castro's successor(s) that they expect does not materialize. If the American administration intervenes to protect them, it will alienate most of Latin America, which regards Cuba (unlike Haiti) as one of its own. Spain will be angry too, and through it, the European Union.

We are unprepared for an explosion because planning for it intelligently - or cooperating with Cuba to prevent it - is impossible politically. By its stranglehold on policy, the Cuban American lobby puts America in harm's way.

Frankly Speaking

Calum Macleod of the London Independent says this anecdote is a Foreign Office favorite: During Jiang Zemin's state visit to Britain in 1999, the Chinese leader was besieged by protesters accusing him of genocide in Tibet. Seeking encouragement, Jiang turned to an aged member of the House of Lords and asked, "Do I look like a dictator to you?"

"No," said his lordship. "But then, I don't know you very well, do I?"

GRAPHIC: PHOTO (2), (1) Fidel Castro, (2) Jiang Zemin

LOAD-DATE: March 25, 2001