SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A1

LENGTH: 1096 words

HEADLINE: U.S. LAWMAKERS FEAST ON CONVERSATION WITH CUBA'S CASTRO;
AT SIX-HOUR DINNER, THEY TOUCH ON TERRORISM, TRADE AND NUTRITION

BYLINE: Deirdre Shesgreen Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau

DATELINE: HAVANA

BODY:
Six members of Congress appeared in their hotel lobby Sunday night dressed in jeans, expecting a casual dinner with foreign reporters.

Instead, they got a six-hour feast with Cuban President Fidel Castro.

As is his custom, Castro alerted the delegation that he could meet with them at the last minute, sending the lawmakers rushing back to their rooms to change into suits and ties. Reporters were not allowed to attend. The dinner stretched into the wee hours Monday, with a discussion that touched on terrorism, the U.S. trade embargo and even the health benefits of eating vegetarian.

Lawmakers said conversation mostly avoided politically dicey subjects, such as the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan, which Cuban officials have harshly criticized. The dinner came at the culmination of a five-day trip aimed at improving relations and fostering increased trade with the communist island.

The 75-year-old dictator greeted the American politicians at the presidential palace in his trademark olive green military uniform and immediately displayed his legendary ability to hold forth for hours on any subject at any time.

Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., said she mentioned to Castro that the group had toured a soybean processing plant earlier that day.

"He went into this long discussion about how much protein soy has, how to make soy yogurt, how much bacteria it has, how much it costs to make," she said.

And in an exchange with Rep. Victor Snyder, D-Ark., Castro revealed his penchant for micromanagement with a story about a vegetarian restaurant the state had opened. The restaurant has become very popular, Castro said, and he had decided to open one in every province to encourage Cubans to have a healthier diet.

"My first thought was 'Can you imagine George Bush thinking about whether a McDonald's should be on these corners or others?' " Snyder said. "Talk about not letting go of central authority."

The group met for three hours in a conference room before Castro said "OK, let's go have lunch." It was midnight.

They moved from the conference room to a smaller room for cocktails before entering the dining hall, a wood-paneled room with an atrium and a black marble floor. It was filled with palm trees, peace lilies and other plants. When they finally sat down at the table, they had a five-course dinner that began with what they described as an exquisitely presented grapefruit dish, salad and smoked salmon, lobster and then lamb, with ice cream for dessert.

Castro spoke through a translator, who sometimes got ahead of the Cuban president. "She had obviously heard it before," one participant said.

The translator occasionally jotted down the time on a pad of paper and showed it to Castro, a hint he completely ignored as the dinner went on into the wee hours.

Long-winded answers

The lawmakers took turns asking questions - and then girding themselves for an hour-long answer. Snyder asked Castro what his hopes and fears were for the future, which prompted a long account by Castro of his effort to create a premier education system, what it had achieved in the country and what its shortcomings were.

Rep. William Lacy Clay Jr., D-St. Louis, asked Castro what it felt like to be in prison and then become president, as Nelson Mandela did in South Africa.

Castro noted that he was in jail for only two years, while Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years. He told them that while in prison, he went from being a rebellious kid to a serious student, voraciously reading any book he could find. He then regaled the group with stories of his youth and the revolution.

Emerson said she came away from the meeting convinced that Castro wants to trade with the United States and will work toward a better relationship.

Change in tone

"I noticed a definite change in tone and rhetoric," said Emerson, who also met with Castro last year. "I could almost feel their desire to do business with us."

Emerson helped win an easing of the 40-year-old trade embargo in 2000, under which Cuba can buy food and medicine with tight restrictions on the financing of such transactions. The Cuban government made the first purchases under the new law last month, and Emerson used this trip to encourage Cuba to buy more American food.

Emerson said the most significant part of the dinner for her was Castro's promising words about future purchases of American rice, corn and other crops.

In her meeting with him last year, when she pressed him about buying American rice, "there were all these qualifications," such as completely lifting the embargo, she said.

"This time, I said, 'I want you to buy our soybeans,' and he said, 'We want to buy them.' "

Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., agreed that Castro seemed much more open and interested in a new relationship with the United States.

"He understands the world has changed," Delahunt said, "that there's a global economy now, and states that . . . don't adapt to that reality simply can't survive."

He said Castro seemed prepared to deal with the potential changes that would come with an easing of U.S. policy.

"I think he is prepared to meet the challenge if the travel ban is lifted and Americans come here in large numbers," Delahunt said. "They will bring their ideas and values and understanding of freedom, and that will have an incredible impact."

No talk of terror war

There was no talk of the Pentagon's decision to house al-Qaida troops at Guantanamo Bay, a U.S. military base here that Castro has long said should be returned to the Cuban government. The group talked about terrorism only briefly, with Castro reaffirming a public statement he had made in the wake of the attacks of Sept. 11 about his desire to eliminate terrorism.

The participants also did not talk about the war in Afghanistan, which had sparked a contentious discussion with another Cuban official earlier in the trip.

In a meeting with Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque on Friday, two of the delegation members - Delahunt and Rep. Steve Lynch, D-Mass. - raised sharp objections to a speech Perez Roque gave in November at the United Nations in which he called the U.S. military campaign "unjustifiable."

Lynch flatly told Perez Roque that his comments were "unacceptable," prompting an hour-long dissection of the remarks and complaints from Perez Roque that U.S. officials never acknowledged Castro's statements of condolences and offer to help after the attacks on Sept. 11.

"It was tense. Neither side backed off," said Clay, who added that he himself did not find Roque's comments offensive.

NOTES:
THE U.S. AND CUBA: OLD ANIMOSITIES, NEW OPPORTUNITIES; Reporter Deirdre Shesgreen:; E-mail: dshesgreen@post-dispatch.com; Phone: 202-298-6880

LOAD-DATE: January 8, 2002