The Cuban Dilemma

For some months, Cuba's Premier Fidel Castro has been showing nearly as much distaste for Havana-bound hijackers as have American authorities. Last Nov. 10, after three men hijacked a Southern Airways jet and took it on a marathon flight to Cuba (TIME, Nov. 27), Castro ordered them jailed and called for broader measures to put the clamps on aerial piracy. With that, the U.S. and Cuba, through Swiss intermediaries, began negotiations that could lead to a mutual agreement to ensure that hijackers would face harsh punishment for their crime in both countries.

But the negotiations place the U.S. in a dilemma. For as a quid pro quo for any agreement, Castro insists on a promise that the U.S. will curb the activities of Cuban exile groups in Florida, which, he charges, have attacked Cuban coastline villages and fishing vessels and helped people escape from Cuba. That means that the U.S., which has always cherished its tradition of giving asylum, now must decide-whether to turn back refugees from Cuba.

The American dilemma took on a certain urgency on Dec. 6, when three anti-Castro refugees arrived in Key West. Using a fishing knife and a pistol that would not shoot, the three forced two pro-Castro crewmen on a Cuban fishing boat to take them to Florida. It was clearly a hijacking, whatever the American sympathies in the case. The refugees were arrested, and for the first time since Castro came to power in 1959, anti-Castro Cubans were ordered to return to their native country. The Cubans appealed the deportation order and are now free in Florida on bond.

"If the price of a skyjacking accord with Castro is the deportation of three trusting men, then the price is too great," says one State Department staffer An Administration official thinks that instead of deportation the three could be then given stiff jail sentences, which would probably satisfy the Castro government even if the jail terms were later shortened or suspended.

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