Clinton Has Little to Offer Cuba at Talks : Migration: Negotiations on refugee crisis begin today. The President is relying on Castro for relief, but holds out only minor concessions in return.

The Administration begins talks with Fidel Castro’s Cuba today, praying that Castro will bail President Clinton out of the crisis over uncontrolled migration from the Caribbean island--but also insisting that it will not offer Castro any major political incentive to do so.

White House and State Department officials said that U.S. envoy Michael Skol has been instructed to offer easier legal immigration for discontented Cubans and possible relaxation of new sanctions that Clinton imposed last month after Castro allowed thousands of his people to head for Florida on rafts and small boats.

But on the eve of the talks, they also reassured Cuban American leaders that the Administration will not lift any part of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba or offer Castro any other form of normal relations--even if the Cuban leader cooperates on the migration issue.

“We are not prepared to lift the embargo or enter negotiations until Cuba solves its own problems by instituting democracy and human rights,” a senior White House official said.

“I am convinced that Bill Clinton is resolute on this issue,” said Rep. Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.), a leading advocate of tough measures against Cuba. “He has shown that he is firm on it.”

Administration officials telephoned Torricelli and Jorge Mas Canosa, the powerful president of the Cuban American National Foundation, to reassure them that the negotiations would be restricted to immigration and would not stray into the broader issues of trade or political relations with Castro.

To some, the resulting negotiation stance appears paradoxical: Clinton wants Castro to use his police to stop would-be refugees, even as the United States maintains sanctions on Cuba’s collapsing economy--the problem that produced the exodus.

And the flow of refugees increased again on Wednesday. The Coast Guard reported that its cutters picked up 2,044 Cubans by 6 p.m. EDT.

But the U.S. position is based on domestic political considerations as much as any foreign policy judgment. In his 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton actively sought the support of Cuban Americans in Florida, and won praise from Mas, a conservative Republican, for his anti-Castro stand.

Last month, after Clinton reversed U.S. immigration policy and barred raft people from entering the country, he invited Mas, other Cuban American leaders and Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles to an unusual meeting at the White House. He asked their policy recommendations and promised them that he would not relax the U.S. trade embargo.

Chiles, a Democrat in a potentially tough reelection race, has also been seeking Cuban American support--and won a considerable boost from the episode.

Cuban Americans make up only about 8% of Florida’s voters, but that is not the point.

“Democrats in Florida don’t expect to win the Cuban American vote but they all want to force their Republican opponents to spend time and money pinning down the constituency,” noted Robert Jaffee of the Mason-Dixon Poll in Miami. “Clinton didn’t win Florida in 1992 but he forced (then-President) George Bush to spend more time here than he wanted to.”

And, one Administration official noted, there’s another reason: “Florida is one of the money centers of the Democratic Party. You can’t raise money there unless you campaign there.”

The Administration’s Cuba policy is not based solely on domestic political judgments. Many officials, including Secretary of State Warren Christopher, have argued that it would be a mistake to offer political concessions to Castro in exchange for help on the migration issue--because it might encourage him to continue using refugee flows to influence U.S. policy.

Administration officials have also been debating the idea of offering Castro a gradual relaxation of sanctions in response to specific political and economic reforms in Cuba.

Christopher referred to that idea in a television interview last weekend, saying: “If he does move toward democratic change in Cuba, the United States will respond in a carefully calibrated way.”

But other Administration officials quickly disavowed the idea, saying that the secretary of state had not meant to send a signal of impending concessions.

Some leading members of Congress have criticized the Administration’s position as too rigid--including some conservative Republicans like Sens. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.) and Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.). The chairmen of the two congressional committees on foreign affairs, Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.) and Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), have also called for more flexibility.

But while the migration crisis has given their views new exposure in a national debate on Cuba policy, it has not appreciably changed the political climate in Florida--or on Capitol Hill.

“We passed the Cuban Democracy Act (which toughened U.S. economic sanctions) in 1992 by a majority of two-thirds,” said Torricelli, the law’s principal author. “If we needed another bill, we’d get more votes now than we had then.”

At the U.S. base in Guantanamo, Cuba, on Wednesday, the evacuation of 2,200 military spouses and children, schoolteachers and other civilian workers and their dependents began.

The evacuation was spurred by fears there could be escapes or riots at the growing refugee camps as well as the need to relieve the strains from the new residents on the small base’s infrastructure.

Many of the evacuees were bitter. As they prepared to board the charter flight for Norfolk, Va., three sisters whose parents are in the Navy wore protest T-shirts that read: “American refugee from Cuba” and “I am a dislocated, relocated, evacuated, unemployed Gitmo resident.”

“It’s hard. All of a sudden you have to leave,” said Kia Sawyers, 20. “It’s disrupting my life. . . . They spare no expense on the immigrants.”

Three Cubans were seriously injured Wednesday outside the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay while crossing a minefield between U.S. and Cuban territory, the Pentagon reported.

The three were among a group of 28 would-be refugees who tried to walk onto the base, where refugees picked up at sea are being detained. They were stopped at the base fence by U.S. Marines and told to return to Cuba, in keeping with the Marine’s “standing guard orders,” the Pentagon said.

The explosion occurred as the group tried to recross the minefield. The Coast Guard said that it plans to transport all three to Miami for treatment. One victim lost his leg between the ankle and knee, the Pengaton said.