Clinton Orders Escort for Cuban Exiles

Determined to head off another deadly confrontation between Cuban warplanes and unarmed civilians, President Clinton on Thursday ordered the Coast Guard to escort an armada of Cuban exile aircraft and boats to a memorial demonstration this weekend for the pilots shot down off the island’s coast last Saturday.

Clinton directed the Coast Guard, with U.S. Navy and Air Force planes standing by to add military muscle, to prevent a Cuban attack on the exiles--while also making sure the demonstrators do not penetrate Cuba’s territorial waters or airspace.

“The president has approved a strong warning to the Cuban government not to violate basic norms of international conduct,” White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said in announcing Clinton’s decision. “We will not tolerate the loss of American lives.”

But he added: “Unauthorized entry by U.S. aircraft and vessels into Cuban territory is prohibited, and firm legal action will face those who violate this prohibition.”

The president’s decision, hammered out in a series of White House meetings, is intended to make sure that members of the Brothers to the Rescue exile group will be able to conduct a peaceful and dignified memorial Saturday honoring four of the organization’s pilots who were killed when Cuban warplanes blasted their two tiny Cessna aircraft from the sky.

The U.S. government and the Brothers group insist that the downed planes were not in Cuban airspace at the time; the Cuban government contends they were.

Although Coast Guard ships and aircraft do not carry armaments capable of combating Cuban warplanes, McCurry said, Clinton “is confident the Pentagon can . . . make sure that the steps he’s outlined today are effective.” He did not elaborate, but the aircraft carrier Enterprise and its battle group are operating off Puerto Rico, within easy range of the planned demonstration. The group includes cruisers, destroyers and submarines.

The steps are unlikely to satisfy Cuban American hard-liners who have demanded punitive action against Fidel Castro’s government for last weekend’s shoot-down. And the Cuban Americans and their allies on Capitol Hill are unlikely to support the tough new restrictions that Clinton ordered against exile groups that taunt Castro by invading the island’s territory, something Brothers to the Rescue has boasted of doing.

The president directed maritime and aviation authorities to adopt regulations imposing jail terms on the owners and operators of boats or aircraft that violate Cuban waters or airspace and authorizing seizure of the vessels and airplanes. McCurry said that the regulations “go well beyond normal operating procedures.”

Jose Basulto, leader of Brothers to the Rescue and pilot of a third plane that survived last weekend’s confrontation, has admitted repeated violations of Cuban airspace, including at least one leaflet-dropping flight directly over Havana. But the new regulations apply only to future flights.

On Capitol Hill, Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) charged that the North American Air Defense Command at Homestead Air Force Base south of Miami wanted to scramble its jets to combat the Cuban MIGs that shot down the light planes Saturday but was denied permission to do so.

Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said the job of the air-defense command is to protect U.S. territory, not civilian aircraft. He said F-15 warplanes at Homestead were ordered to battle stations with their engines running when radar indicated that the Cuban MIGs might be headed for the United States. He explained that when the Cuban planes turned away from Florida, the U.S. jets “stood down and went back to a normal posture.”

In Miami, Basulto said he plans to fly over the spot of the shoot-down to pay homage to the dead pilots. Other anti-Castro activists, under the banner of the Democracy Movement, plan to sail to the same spot in international waters, about 18 miles north of Havana, to throw memorial wreaths into the sea. Democracy Movement leaders said that more than a dozen boats will take part.

A group called the Cuban American United Students Assn. announced plans to tie up traffic at Miami International Airport this afternoon to call attention to the shoot-down. And on Saturday evening, about 40,000 people are expected to attend a prayer service in the Orange Bowl in Miami in honor of the four dead fliers.

In Havana on Thursday, officials appeared eager to prevent further damage to U.S.-Cuban relations, which had been calm for several months until the planes were shot down. “Who’s to win?” said Carlos Fernandez de Cosio, director of the U.S. and Canada department at the Foreign Relations Ministry. “Not the Cuban people; not the Cuban government; not the people of the United States. It’s the extreme-right mafia in Miami.”

Minimizing the effect of the shoot-downs, he said: “We do not think we are back to Square One with the United States.”

Realistically, said Luis Rene Fernandez, a researcher at the Havana-based United States Studies Center, “There is not much Cuba can do. Since there is no trade relationship, they cannot stop trade.”

Asked about Cuba’s potential response to this weekend’s planned demonstration, Fernandez de Cosio said: “If they are in international waters, we should have no problems. [But] Cuba in the exercise of its sovereignty will take whatever measures it needs to to protect the integrity of our territorial waters on Saturday or any other day of the year.”

He declined to comment on Clinton’s decision to send the U.S. Coast Guard escort with demonstrators this weekend.

Times staff writer Juanita Darling in Cuba and special correspondent Mike Clary in Miami contributed to this report.