Albright Hears Criticism of Policy Toward Cuba

On the most tranquil of tropical isles, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright found herself confronted Sunday with the harsh reality that even the closest allies of the United States look askance at the insistent American isolation of Cuba.

The issue arose in private talks Albright had with Prime Minister Basdeo Panday of Trinidad and Tobago on the eve of her meeting today with the foreign ministers of the members of the Caribbean Community, or Caricom, a close economic association of Caribbean states.

While details of the talks here on the island of Tobago were not revealed, Panday told a news conference: “I don’t think Cuba poses the kind of problem it did when there was a Cold War. Caricom has taken the position that Cuba is a Caribbean state.”

Asked if Caricom would accept Cuba as a member, the Trinidadian leader replied: “If Cuba applies, it will be considered. We don’t see Cuba as a problem.” He said he sensed a softening of the U.S. position on Cuba, adding quickly, “But there is the Cuban lobby.” This was a reference to Cuban American organizations that pressure the White House and Congress to maintain the trade embargo imposed on Cuba more than 35 years ago.

Asked to comment on possible Cuban membership in Caricom, Albright told reporters, “Obviously, it is up to Caricom.” But she made it clear this was not a prospect pleasing to the Clinton administration.

The secretary said the United States and the Caribbean nations are in agreement that joint efforts have to be made to encourage a Cuban transition to democracy. She said she had shown Panday her “favorite map”--displaying Latin America in both 1978 and 1998, with dictatorships or military regimes colored red and elected civilian governments colored green.

For 1978, the map is largely red. But, she said, “It is now all green except for one small spot of red on one small island known as Cuba.”

*

The implied disparagement by Panday of U.S. policy toward Cuba was surprising because Trinidad and Tobago is regarded as a staunch American ally. The United States is its largest trading partner and source of investment.

Albright has been closely identified with U.S. policy toward Cuba since 1996, when, as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, she denounced the Cuban government’s downing of two planes flown by Cuban exiles as “not cojones [but] cowardice.” Versions of her comment sprouted on automobile bumper stickers throughout Miami and, in the view of many political analysts, helped President Clinton win Florida’s electoral votes in the 1996 election.

In the wake of the pope’s visit to Cuba in January, however, Albright has proposed that the United States donate food and medicine to Cuba as a humanitarian gesture. But she has opposed all legislation aimed at lifting the sanctions on Cuban purchases of U.S. food and medicine.

Although the issue might arise, Cuba is not likely to provoke a great deal of contentious discussion at today’s meeting between Albright and the Caribbean foreign ministers, in Port of Spain on the neighboring island of Trinidad.

Caribbean governments are more concerned with obtaining additional U.S. aid for economic development, increasing the amount of U.S. financial support for their anti-drug efforts and easing the American policy of deporting convicted criminals from the region back to the islands where they were born.

For Albright, her stay in Trinidad and Tobago on a two-stop tour of the Caribbean means that she will have seen both the worst and the best of the area in three days. Haiti, which she visited Saturday, is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, while Trinidad and Tobago, with its extensive oil reserves, is the richest in the Caribbean.

She began her day in Tobago by joining a Palm Sunday procession marching up Mt. Pleasant to St. Patrick’s Anglican Church, built in 1843 of bricks shipped from England. Albright carried a palm frond bent into the shape of a cross and worshiped at the small, crowded church.