Good Riddance

It was good riddance for a very poor idea: last week negotiations between the Kennedy-recruited Tractors-for-Freedom Committee and Cuba's Fidel Castro broke down.

Last fortnight committee negotiators went to Havana to offer Castro some 500 farm tractors, worth about $2,500,000, in return for the release of 1,214 prisoners Castro had taken in the Bay of Pigs invasion. But Castro upped his demands, insisted on $28 million worth of tractors, and imposed other impossible requirements. The negotiators returned to the U.S., consulted with committee leaders, who last week sent Castro an ultimatum: either accept the committee's original offer--or else.

Fidel Castro, who had already milked the whole business for far more than it was worth in propaganda value, refused to come down on his latest demands, sent a ten-man prisoner detail back to the U.S. to negotiate some more. He blamed the committee for trying "to confuse North American public opinion and the prisoners' own relatives." By that time, even the Tractors-for-Freedom Committee had had enough. It declined to enter into further negotiations. The sputtering tractor deal coughed and--hopefully--died.

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