By Rafael Lorente Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON-Despite the hard-line bluster of President Bush's policy pronouncements on Cuba, the administration has adopted a subtle but possibly significant new strategy, offering to ease sanctions while Fidel Castro is still in power if free and fair elections for the National Assembly are held next year.

Worried that the message did not get out clearly last month when Bush gave his Cuba policy speeches in Washington and Miami, a senior State Department official reiterated the new strategy in a background briefing with reporters this week.

Nobody expects Castro to meet the U.S. conditions, but the subtle shift seems designed to make the administration's position more moderate in the eyes of farm-state legislators who want to eliminate the embargo, while retaining the support of Florida's Cuban-American community. It also shifts the Cuba policy debate to Cuba and its political and economic system. "There's a real feeling that the [Cuba] policy hasn't worked and they're looking for new ways to make it work," a second State Department official said Friday. "They're being flexible. It's definitely not trying to find new ways to hit Cuba with a hammer."

The second State Department official said the new rhetoric does not represent a change in policy, which still calls for democracy in Cuba. Instead, the senior official said, it is another way of achieving that goal.

Bush's defense of the embargo last month was in sharp contrast to former President Jimmy Carter, who had just returned from Havana, where he called for an end to sanctions.

The briefing this week at the State Department took some Cuba watchers by surprise, according to a congressional source. Even Bush's speech on May 20 surprised some. According to the congressional source, hard-line anti-Castro Republican representatives Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen were not informed the speech would have such language.

Some anti-Castro hard-liners oppose the idea because it could legitimize the Castro government and Cuba's communist constitution.

Lifting the embargo, or easing some of its provisions, while Castro is still in power would require cooperation from Congress. Under the terms of the 1996 Helms-Burton law, the four-decade embargo can't be lifted until Cuba has committed to free elections, an independent judiciary and a transitional government that "shall not include Fidel or Raul Castro."

But most agree the offer from Bush is likely to mean very little. Cuba probably will not agree to a vote, as Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon made clear soon after Bush's appearance in Miami last month.

Rafael Lorente can be reached at rlorente@sun-sentinel.com or 202-824-8225 in Washington.

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