Good Cop, Bad Cop

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

Cuba and Haiti are adjoining Caribbean countries ruled by dictatorships hostile to the U.S., and lately Washington has followed nearly identical policies toward them. It has enforced tight embargoes against trade and travel and even sent warships to prowl off both coasts. Starting last month, refugees fleeing both islands have been plucked from the waters off Florida and interned in side-by-side tent cities at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.

But last week U.S. policies toward the two countries suddenly veered in opposite directions. American and Cuban officials are talking to each other -- albeit on a narrowly defined agenda -- for the first time since last December. At week's end they seemed to be drawing near a preliminary deal under which the U.S. would let more Cubans immigrate legally and Fidel Castro would stanch the flow of rafters.

Simultaneously, in case Haiti's rulers thought Washington had stopped paying attention to them, the State Department and Pentagon joined in reviving earlier threats of a U.S. invasion, whooping it up as inevitable. As theater, it was the kind of showy saber rattling Haitian Army Chief Raoul Cedras and his cronies have grown used to ignoring. While some officials publicly speculated about the number of troops needed (12,000 to 13,000), the likely cost ($427 million) and a possible date (mid-October), President Clinton still has not given the go-ahead.

These policy divergences mirror real differences between the countries that, politically at least, outweigh their equally real similarities. The Haitian military clique that seized power in 1991 is an outlaw regime, scorned by nearly all other nations, that sustains its power over a terrorized populace by brute force. Yet its army is a rabble that could be swept aside by an American invasion force in a matter of days, if not hours. Cuba's communist government, by contrast, has survived 35 years of U.S. hostility and the collapse of its longtime patron, the Soviet Union. Despite growing anger and privation among Cubans, Castro retains a degree of popular support -- and a big, well-armed military force that makes a U.S. invasion too bloody to contemplate.

By last week, too, the Clinton Administration's initial response to the renewed flood of refugees that Castro had let loose was heading toward a dead end. The White House had hoped its decision to consign the fugitives indefinitely to the bleak tent cities at Guantanamo would discourage the balseros from pushing off into the Straits of Florida. But a drop-off during the final weekend in August was caused merely by foul weather; clearing skies and lower waves tempted so many rafters into the water last week that U.S. vessels were again picking up more than 2,000 a day. Though Panama pledged to take some refugees off Washington's hands (temporarily, at U.S. expense) and some other nations might help out too, the day was clearly visible when the rafters would overflow all the available detention sites -- and then what?

So delegations headed by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Michael Skol and Ricardo Alarcon, president of the Cuban National Assembly and a former Foreign Minister, met in New York City Thursday and Friday, with more talks scheduled for Sunday, to see if they could work something out. They appeared to be heading toward an agreement under which Washington would accept some 20,000 Cubans a year as legal immigrants. That would be about 10 times the number now admitted annually, though only a small fraction of those who would like to flee: U.S. ships have pulled 23,000 balseros from the Straits of Florida just since Aug. 19. Castro would allow many more American officials into the U.S. Interests Section in Havana to process applications. More important, he would once more stop the rafters from leaving, though U.S. officials know one easy way he might do so is by throwing them into prison.

The agreement would still leave the U.S. with a problem of what to do with the more than 16,000 Cubans at Guantanamo. Attorney General Janet Reno has insisted they will not be given preference in the queue for legal entry. A TIME/CNN opinion poll last week showed that 74% of Americans do not want to admit the Cubans from Guantanamo -- or the Haitians.

The bigger question is whether an immigration deal will lead to any longer- term lessening of U.S.-Cuban tension. The same TIME survey indicated that while 64% of Americans are ready to talk with Castro, a bare majority -- 51% -- thinks the embargo should not be lifted.

Getting rid of the embargo, however, has been the Cuban leader's aim since the boat wave began. Two weeks ago, the Clinton Administration said it would not be bullied into broader talks. But last week Washington was hinting that a migration deal could be followed -- after a decent interval -- by wider negotiations. These could involve "carefully calibrated steps" to loosen the embargo in return for moves by Havana toward reform. Some U.S. experts believe Castro has already decided on some measures, such as allowing Cuban farm cooperatives to sell food direct to urban consumers, but held off on announcing them so that he can present them as concessions. But Castro is not going to renounce communism, and Bill Clinton is still afraid of seeming to cozy up to a red dictator.

At least Castro is willing to talk. Haiti's rulers are thumbing their noses at all diplomatic approaches aimed at getting them to yield power. They refused last week to let Rolf Knutsson, a U.N. envoy, into the country. Repression has been stepped up too; gunmen in Port-au-Prince murdered Father Jean-Marie Vincent, a Roman Catholic priest, veteran organizer of peasants and close friend of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the freely elected President thrown out by the military in 1991. Cedras and friends obviously believe the threats of a U.S. invasion are a sham.

Last week the Clinton Administration took another step toward proving otherwise. At a meeting with Caribbean nations in Jamaica, American officials persuaded Barbados, Belize, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago to contribute 266 troops to an invasion force. Tiny as that number is, it accomplishes one step needed before D-day: throwing a "multinational" cloak over the operation. Deputy Secretary of Defense John Deutch declared that a "multinational" force would go into Haiti, peacefully or otherwise. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott added that if the Cedras clique was still in power when the troops arrived, its members would be arrested and turned over to a restored Aristide government.

That leaves only two more things to be done before an invasion. One is to give the last twist to the trade embargo. A team of 88 international monitors will get its last members into position along Haiti's 186-mile land border with the Dominican Republic on Sept. 13. No one expects them to be able to stop the smuggling of food and gasoline, but the inspectors will have to be given time -- perhaps a month -- to fail. That would allow Washington to issue a final get-out-or-else ultimatum, contending that it had exhausted all the alternatives.

The last pre-invasion essential -- the President's green light -- is not so certain. He knows an invasion would be unpopular: people questioned in the TIME/CNN poll were against it, 58% to 30%. Opposition could intensify if U.S. troops, after a quick and cheap initial victory, got bogged down Somalia-style in a long, fruitless and possibly bloody job of "nation building." At some point, though, Clinton may lose his last hope of scaring Cedras into quitting and find that he either has to order the troops into action or look like a fool making threats that cannot be believed.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: [TMFONT 1 d #666666 d {Source: INS, State Department}]CAPTION: COMING TO AMERICA

With reporting by Massimo Calabresi and Bernard Diederich/Port-au-Prince and J.F.O. McAllister and Ann M. Simmons/Washington