Expanding Refugee Housing Poses Risks : Immigration: U.S. officials fear Cubans, Haitians may foment violence at Guantanamo. They’re also worried about political impact on Clinton.

The Clinton Administration is facing a daunting and politically risky challenge as it prepares to expand the refugee detention centers at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base: how to hold Cuban and Haitian refugees there indefinitely without inviting violence and riots.

A series of disturbances already has erupted among Haitians at the base on Cuba’s southeast shore. Although U.S. security forces have quelled them all successfully, both Haitians and Marines were injured in one fray last Saturday and military experts concede that more such incidents are almost inevitable.

Furthermore, U.S. officials are mindful that the incidents occurred among a refugee population of only 14,000 people who had been in U.S. custody only a few days or weeks. Current plans call for expanding the camps to hold up to 60,000 people and to keep the Cubans there for months, allowing them little freedom of movement.

Top Administration planners worry that serious violence on Guantanamo--with the predictable nightly TV footage of rioting refugees and near-daily casualties among Cubans and U.S. security troops--would be politically damaging to President Clinton.

As a result, Marine Corps Lt. Gen. John Sheehan, operations director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that the Pentagon is considering the possibility of calling up reserves in a few months to relieve active-duty troops at the base.

“We do not need to do this right now in a near-term basis. But with the possibility that this will be a long-term commitment, there is a distinct possibility that we’ll use reserve forces to do that,” he said.

Clinton already has had one bad experience with such disturbances. During the Mariel boat lift in 1980, then-Gov. Clinton agreed to let the federal government house Cuban refugees at Ft. Chaffee, Ark. A few weeks later, they rioted. The episode is believed to have contributed to Clinton’s loss when he sought reelection as governor.

Retired Marine Brig. Gen. George H. Walls Jr., who commanded the joint task force that oversaw the detention of Haitians at Guantanamo Bay in 1991 and 1992, warned that the Administration’s current plan “has the potential to be dangerous” as well.

With no sign of any immediate solution to the Cubans’ plight, restlessness could build quickly, Walls cautioned.

“I don’t think that you can play enough baseball and soccer there to keep the Cubans happy” at the naval base, he declared.

The Pentagon already has begun preparing for the increase in the refugee population at Guantanamo Bay. Officials announced plans Thursday to construct tent cities designed to hold up to 35,000 persons.

To beef up security, U.S. officials are poised to deploy 8,000 more U.S. troops--mainly Marines--to the naval base over the next few days. Families of U.S. sailors stationed there are being sent to Norfolk, Va.

Pentagon officials said that many of the additional troops and other U.S. military personnel being deployed to the naval base would be berthed aboard the hospital ship Comfort, which was ordered to Guantanamo Bay on Thursday.

At the same time, the Administration is trying to organize the camps in a way that discourages violence:

* The refugees are being segregated into a spate of small, fenced-in camps. Haitians and Cubans already are housed separately. Young men will be in their own compound and families will be put in another.

* The naval base’s soccer and baseball fields will be used for recreation.

* Educational programs (including language, math and history classes), games and religious services are being established for the refugees. Private relief organizations are being asked to help.

But veterans of previous detention efforts say that the most important step is to establish local governing bodies for each camp, staffed by the Cubans and Haitians themselves, which could serve a liaison function between the military and the refugees and help run each facility.

The Marine Corps’ Gen. Walls said that local governments helped keep order in the 1991-93 detention effort.

U.S. officials said that their operation in Guantanamo may be hampered by post-Cold War military cutbacks, which have left the Pentagon with fewer civil affairs officers, psychological operations experts and military police.

The shortage may force a reserve call-up, although Sheehan stressed Thursday that the decision need not be made immediately. Such a move could be politically difficult for the White House, and officials suggested that Clinton may ask reservists to volunteer.

Military police forces also can be hampered by the inevitable restrictions on use of force to quell disturbances. Walls recalled that during the 1991-93 detention effort, MPs were permitted to carry only nightsticks. Side arms and rifles were locked up in the base armory a half-mile from the detention camp.

Don M. Snider, a former Pentagon planner now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, agreed that much of the outcome will depend on luck. “Common sense says there isn’t a hell of a lot you can do” to prevent disturbances, he added.

Besides the possibility of violence, the Administration’s plan faces several other dangers: Hurricanes, rife in late summer, could force a hurried evacuation of the base’s tent cities. The tropical climate could spread disease quickly. And water and power plants could fail.

The construction problem itself is a challenge. Although the Pentagon plans to fly in some of the needed equipment in C-5 and C-141 transports, most of it will have to be brought in by barge--a slow and cumbersome trip from the continental United States.

And the operation will cost money.

Dennis L. Boxx, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters Thursday that preliminary estimates show start-up costs for the detention effort could be as much as $100 million, with operating costs of $20 million a month--just to house 45,000 persons.

The bill would increase proportionately for additional detainees, either at Guantanamo Bay or in one of the Caribbean or Central American countries that are expected to agree to provide similar safe havens.

Boxx said that the Pentagon is paying the cost out of the regular budgets of the armed services, with the Navy taking the bulk of it out of its operations and maintenance funds. But, he said, Clinton may ask Congress for additional appropriations later this year.