Panama and Honduras Offer to Take Cubans

As Cuban refugees took to the seas again in large numbers Tuesday, the Clinton Administration won agreement from Panama, Honduras and another nation to accept up to 17,000 more Cuban migrants if detention camps at the Guantanamo Bay naval base fill up.

The Coast Guard said its cutters had picked up 1,234 migrants by 6 p.m. EDT, following the recovery of 112 on Monday. Early-warning planes reported the Florida Straits were loaded with rafts, with hundreds more about to be launched and still hundreds more reportedly being built on the beaches.

The resumption of the exodus came as officials disclosed that Panama has agreed to allow the United States to house up to 10,000 Cuban refugees at U.S. military bases near the Panama Canal. Officials also said that Honduras has agreed to take 5,000 more and Turks and Caicos Islands will accept 2,000 refugees.

The move by Panama, to be announced formally by that country’s new president, Ernesto Perez Balladares, when he takes office Thursday, is expected to provide a major boost to the Administration’s new policy of sending refugees to detention camps rather than admitting them to the United States.

Panama’s outgoing president, Guillermo Endara, offered earlier this year to allow the United States to house Haitian refugees at the military bases, but he later backed off in the face of protests by Panamanians. The country’s new administration has been more eager to cooperate with Washington.

The agreements came as the U.S. and Cuban governments prepared to begin limited negotiations Thursday in New York on the migration problem, with hints that Washington may discuss broader economic and political issues if the talks go well.

As a sign of its own intense interest in the talks, Cuba announced that Ricardo Alarcon, former foreign minister and now president of the National Assembly, will head its negotiating team. The U.S. side will be led by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Michael Skol.

The renewed deluge of refugees came as a disappointment to the Administration, which had been hoping its message that the rafters would no longer be granted immigrant status and should stay home had gotten through to ordinary Cubans.

Analysts said there still was a possibility that the refugee flow would abate over the next few days. “Anything’s still possible, but there’s just no way to tell this early in the game,” one veteran Cuba-watcher said. “We’re continuing to watch the situation closely.”

Meanwhile, the Pentagon reported Tuesday that the number of Cubans being detained at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay had risen to 15,471, with another 790 on Navy warships headed for the refugee camp. A total of 14,308 Haitians are in separate facilities at the base.

U.S. officials have said they hope to expand the detention camps at Guantanamo Bay to accommodate almost 40,000 refugees this week, with hopes of enlarging them later this month to take up to 60,000. So far, military construction battalions have been barely keeping pace with the number of Haitian and Cuban refugees they need to house.

Air Force Col. Douglas Kennett, a Pentagon spokesman, said U.S. officials were doing what they could to make the detainees’ experience there more pleasant, including providing education programs, religious services, and soccer and baseball fields.

But he cautioned that conditions there are still harsh. “I would not kid anyone--it’s not summer camp at Guantanamo.”

At the White House, mid-level officials led by Deputy National Security Adviser Samuel (Sandy) Berger met Tuesday to write formal negotiating instructions for this week’s U.S.-Cuban talks, prescribing a cautious course, at least initially.

The instructions being given to Skol will direct him to rebuff politely any attempt by the Cubans to broaden the talks to include other issues, such as the 31-year-old trade embargo, a senior official said.

But officials reiterated that if Cuba cooperates on the immigration issue, the Administration will be willing to discuss repealing the policy it imposed earlier this month that prohibits Cuban Americans from sending money to their relatives on the island.

And some officials have hinted at even broader talks if those work out. “We’re waiting for (Cuban President Fidel) Castro to take positive steps on migration and other issues” before offering to broaden the talks to include other issues, one official said.

Administration strategists reaffirmed Tuesday that the basic elements of the U.S. proposal remain unchanged:

First, Washington will offer to relax the standards that it has imposed for granting political asylum to Cubans, and will speed up processing of applications for immigration visas to accommodate close to the current ceiling of 27,845 legal entrants a year.

It also will offer to grant entry rights to cousins and grandparents of Cuban Americans, instead of just immediate family members. “But there are still some details to be worked out, and no final decisions have been made,” one senior official said.

At the same time, the Administration plans to press Havana to accept repatriation of some of the dozens of convicted criminals whom Cuba sent over during the Mariel boat lift of 1980. They are now being held in U.S. jails.

And Washington also intends to bring up what some officials have called “credible evidence” that Cuba has sent at least 100 prisoners into the Florida Straits as “refugees” recently, as it did during Mariel.

The Administration is deliberately downplaying the New York talks, to the point that one White House spokesman claimed that they were “regularly scheduled”--although the Administration never sought to fix a date for them until the flood of refugees appeared.

And top Administration officials have deliberately stopped publicly discussing any possibility of further dealings with Cuba if a deal is reached on the immigration issue.

On Sunday, Secretary of State Warren Christopher said the United States would consider political concessions if Castro enacts serious political and economic reforms.

But on Tuesday, a Christopher aide said: “We’re trying to freeze the ball on that. We don’t want Castro to get any signal that might encourage him . . . to come and stiff us (in the New York talks) as a way of trying to squeeze more out of us.”

The decision by Panama was by far the most significant offer of refugee aid from any country in the region. The Administration also has received pledges of cooperation from Venezuela, St. Lucia and Guyana, but none has said specifically how many Cuban refugees it would accept.

Wire service reports from Cuba told of large numbers of boat people putting the finishing touches on makeshift rafts on the beaches just east of Havana on Tuesday, after having stayed ashore during the weekend’s squalls and heavy seas.

Reuters reported that about 15 groups of rafters were gathered on Cojimar Beach, waiting for the evening cool.

At the shore below the modern suburb of Alamar, a young man called Joel said he planned on beating any change in policy coming from the U.S.-Cuba talks. “By Thursday, I’ll be there.” His boat, made of light wood, looked like a large packing case, Reuters said.

Alarcon, the chief negotiator for Thursday’s talks, was Cuba’s U.N. ambassador for years and took part in negotiations that led to a 1984 U.S.-Cuban accord that set up the machinery for periodic consultations such as this one.

Refugee Count

After dropping dramatically over the weekend, the number of Cuban rafters picked up by the Coast Guard is on the rise again.

DAILY INTERCEPTS Aug. 19: 575 20: 1,189 21: 1,293 22: 2,628 23: 3,253 24: 3,096 25: 1,670 26: 585 27: 130 28: 84 29: 295 30: *1234 *as of 6 p.m. EDT

Source: Coast Guard office in Miami