American In-Your-Face Diplomacy Aims to Provoke Havana, Cubans Say

Weeks before two planes piloted by exiles were shot down over the Florida Straits, there was, Cuban officials say, a diplomatic near-miss in a stately hotel here that showed just why and how the already shaky relations between the U.S. and Cuba could and did plunge.

The seemingly small incident, which is repeatedly mentioned by Cuban officials here, happened in January and involved U.S. diplomats and National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon, one of the top officials of dictator Fidel Castro’s regime.

Alarcon, it seems, had been invited to meet with a U.S. congressional delegation and was just concluding the session at the venerable Hotel Nacional when taxis rented by American diplomats pulled up to the portico and disgorged their passengers: five Cubans well-known for challenging their government on everything from economic statistics to emigration policy.

U.S. diplomats whisked the Cuban dissidents into a dark, downstairs bar where they awaited their meeting with the American legislators. But their greeter--a U.S. diplomat known for her contacts with critics of the Castro regime--stayed in the lobby, waiting for latecomers.

Alarcon saw her and immediately grasped the situation. He flushed and visibly stiffened, witnesses say, with one adding, “He was personally antagonized.”

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For he and other government officials here, the back-to-back scheduling of top leaders of the Castro regime and their bitter enemies was more than a simple error, a small indiscretion by the very Americans who the Cubans feel should be trying to smooth relations between Washington and Havana.

It was, they say, yet another provocation, a show of American disrespect, one more instance of the in-your-face practices of the few U.S. diplomats allowed in Cuba.

But U.S. diplomats say that, for their work on behalf of American interests, in Cuba or anywhere else in the globe, they try to stay in touch not only with the ruling government but also with opposition sources.

They say the incident at the Hotel Nacional may have irritated the Cubans so much because they fear that, for the first time, fractured groups of government critics have joined in an umbrella organization, the Cuban Council. The council is estimated to unite 100 or so opposition groups, although the real number of members is unclear.

“Any allegations that the concilio was created or directed by the U.S. government are merely part of a clumsy attempt by the regime to discredit this authentic organization,” State Department spokeswoman Julie Reside said.

Still, many analysts contend that U.S. diplomats are making it easy for Cuban officials to support such accusations while increasing the tensions between the United States and leaders of this island nation.

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Cuba and the United States have a history of poor relations for most of the 37 years since Castro took power. Cuba and the United States, formally speaking, have no diplomatic relations. But in a brief thaw in 1977, they agreed to establish “interest sections” to “carry out routine diplomatic and consular functions.” Forty-six Americans now work at the U.S. Interest Section here.

“The U.S. Interest Section in Havana meets with [human rights] organizations as part of its normal diplomatic function to maintain contacts with all sectors of Cuban society,” Reside said. “Many other foreign diplomatic missions in Havana carry out similar functions.”

But Cuban officials see the American actions differently.

“They are acting outside their purview and have clearly violated their mandate,” Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina said in a recent interview with foreign reporters. “This office is dedicating a disproportionate amount of time to encouraging and stimulating everything that will make relations between the United States and Cuba even more awkward.”

Cubans are not the only ones who take that view.

“What the Interest Section has been doing down there is amateurish and in the long run destructive to the very human rights causes that they say they are supporting,” said Wayne S. Smith, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington and a former chief of the U.S. Interest Section in Cuba.

Exactly what the section does is a matter of contention.

Diplomatic sources say its actions are “providing moral support for people who want to work for peaceful change on the island.” The American diplomats pass out textbooks and pamphlets on political and economic theory as well as Spanish-language U.S. newspapers. Such information is distributed to Cuban universities and think tanks, as well.

“We did the same kind of stuff in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe,” one former diplomat said.

But he noted that only in Cuba has the Interest Section been so aggressive about interceding in contacts between Cuban activists and groups of U.S. citizens who manage to get through the American red tape to win official permission to visit the island.

Take, for example, what the U.S. diplomats did to some prominent Californians.

Members of the World Affairs Council of Northern California were visiting Cuba last month, a week before the Cubans shot down the exile planes.

Two representatives from the 25-member California group called on human rights activist Elizardo Sanchez to ask him to speak. Coincidentally, a U.S. diplomat was also visiting him and heard them make an appointment for 5 p.m. the next day at the Hotel Nacional.

The next day, as the Californians returned from another meeting, they were surprised to see a U.S. government van parked outside their hotel. Waiting for them in the hotel garden overlooking Havana Bay were Sanchez, seven other Cubans and a U.S. diplomat.

“The Interest Section had quite clearly gone around and picked these people up,” one outraged member of the delegation said of the Cuban government critics.

The source noted that the diplomat, in another breach of common practice, also asked to attend the meeting between the Californians and the Cuban opposition figures. The delegates refused.

“I don’t think it makes sense to have dissidents delivered to a hotel in an embassy vehicle,” the former ambassador said. “That’s over the line.”

Reside explained that the Interest Section sometimes provides transportation to opponents of the Castro regime because most activists lack cars or the cash for taxi fares. “Many of them have been harassed on their way to meetings,” she said.