Bush Tightens the Economic Noose on Teetering Castro : Embargo: Ships that also trade with Cuba are banned from U.S. ports. The move strengthens the President’s hand with Florida voters.

President Bush moved Saturday to tighten the longstanding U.S. trade embargo against Cuba by imposing a new ban on entry to American ports by ships that trade with the Fidel Castro regime.

Bush said that only those ships that receive special licenses from the Treasury Department would be allowed entry to U.S. ports if they continue to trade with Cuba. An Administration official said the restrictions would affect about 40 ships a year that load and unload cargo in both the United Stats and Cuba.

In an apparent effort to improve his political standing among anti-communist Cuban-Americans, a crucial voting bloc in Florida, Bush also called for the Treasury Department to permit direct shipments of humanitarian food and aid packages between the U.S. and Cuba. That change, Bush said, would deny Castro’s regime hard-currency payments it now receives from high shipment rates charged on packages routed through Mexico.

Bush’s announcement seemed designed to move the White House out in front on an issue already being considered in Congress.

In his statement, Bush criticized a Democratic embargo bill, sponsored by Rep. Robert G. Torricelli, (D-N.J.), that Bush said “could, without intending to do so, weaken the embargo.”

In a statement issued from his vacation home in Kennebunkport, Me., Bush said Torricelli’s bill would inadvertently help Castro by providing his government with millions of dollars in new fees from telecommunication services between the U.S. and Cuba.

U.S. law now allows for phone service between the United States and Cuba but restricts currency transfers to Havana to pay for the services, the White House said. Torricelli’s bill, by contrast, allows for much-expanded services to broaden contacts between the island and Cuban-Americans in Florida and elsewhere. It also allows for the payment of telecommunication fees.

Bush said he also opposes the provision in the Torricelli bill that allows direct shipment of medicine to the Castro government, because such shipments might aid the “security forces of the Castro dictatorship and could contribute to the building of a biotechnology industry.”

Bush also said that he wants to expand the civil fines and penalties that can be imposed on embargo violators. The current system of criminal penalties is too unwieldy for broad use, the Administration said.

Washington’s new hard-line approach to Cuba comes at a time when the communist regime of Castro is more isolated than ever. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of communism in Eastern Europe, Castro has been effectively cut off from his main sources of financial and political support.

The Russian government of Boris N. Yeltsin already has announced that it is cutting off the old Soviet subsidy program for Cuba, which totaled as much as $5 billion a year. As a result, the Cuban economy is a shambles.

Russia also is withdrawing its brigade of troops from the island and has voted at the United Nations to condemn Cuban human rights violations.

Now many Cuban-Americans and other conservatives believe that by tightening the ropes further, Washington finally may be able to help bring down Castro.

Yet at least some Administration officials are reportedly still concerned that Cuba’s crumbling economy may lead to an attempt by Castro to open the floodgates for a massive exodus of refugees to Florida this year. That could prompt a repeat of the Mariel boat lift controversy that hurt President Jimmy Carter in the middle of the 1980 election campaign.