By JUAN O. TAMAYO
Herald Staff Writer

GENEVA -- The annual campaign to condemn Cuba at the United Nations
Commission on Human Rights is on again, this time with a twist: The
once-communist Czech Republic and Poland have replaced Washington as
chief accusers.

Always hard fought, the battle this year has already seen several nose-to-nose
clashes between Havana diplomats and Miami exiles, and vitriolic Havana
attacks on former Czech comrades as U.S. ``lackeys.''

The campaign climaxes today with a vote by the 53-member commission on a
resolution drafted by Prague and Warsaw that expresses concern over Cuba's
recent crackdown on dissident and urges it to release all political prisoners.

Washington pushed resolutions condemning Cuba through the commission's
annual spring assemblies at U.N. headquarters in Geneva from 1991 to 1997,
but suffered an unexpected defeat last year on a 16-19 vote with 18
abstentions.

U.S. officials say this year's vote is too close to call but insist that even if the
Czech-Polish resolution loses, just having the two post-communist
democracies lead the campaign is a ``moral victory'' over Cuba.

``We are impressed with the efforts by the Czech and Polish delegations in
giving Cuba an opportunity for a transition to democracy,'' said Cuban-born
Assistant Secretary of State Lula Rodriguez.

The Czech-Polish resolution notes that Havana took ``some positive steps in
the last few years'' but asserts that President Fidel Castro's Communist
government ``continues to violate fundamental human rights.''

It criticizes the closed-door trial and conviction of four leading dissidents last
month and a recent law establishing harsh sanctions for vaguely described
crimes like ``supporting'' U.S. policies on Havana.

But its language is much softer than past U.S.-sponsored resolutions and it
drops previous requirements that the commission appoint a special monitor for
Cuba, a sanction reserved for the worst violators.

As mild as the wording is, Havana has reacted with unusual harshness at an
assembly largely dominated by the Kosovo crisis and U.S. proposals to
condemn China and overhaul all international human rights mechanisms.

Cuban officials have made thinly veiled threats to sponsor a resolution in the
Human Rights Commission attacking Prague's ``oppression'' of Gypsies, and
Havana newspapers have noted the growth of Czech prostitution since
communism fell in 1989.

It's been a nasty fight outside the commission as well, with U.N. police called
twice to break up verbal run-ins between Havana diplomats and some of the
dozen exiles in Geneva to lobby against Cuba -- far fewer than in past years.

Miami activists also called police when they spotted a Havana envoy tearing
down posters made by exiles who reproduced a French newspaper story
accusing Cuba of drug trafficking. The posters carry Castro's photograph
under the headline Leader or Dealer?

Freedom House, a pro-democracy group based in New York, complained
that Cuban agents have been shadowing its lobbyists in Geneva.

In public, U.S. delegates have been letting the Czechs and Poles take the lead
in floor debates with Havana.

``Former human rights fighters in our country learned to appreciate the value of
support from the democratic world . . . when they themselves were persecuted
not so long ago,'' Czech diplomat Tomas Pstross replied after a blast last
week from Cuban Ambassador Carlos Amat.

But in private, U.S. officials have been lobbying strongly for the Czech-Polish
resolution, button-holing ambassadors in the halls and plying them with reports
documenting Cuban restrictions on dissent.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright raised the Cuba issue during her recent
round of meetings with European leaders on NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia,
Washington officials have confirmed.

And the Czech-born Albright helped persuade Czech President Vaclav Havel,
a dissident jailed under communism and one of Europe's most respected
leaders, to take the lead on the Cuba resolution, they added.

U.S. and European diplomats say they are cautiously optimistic the
Czech-Polish resolution will be approved today.

Last year's rejection of the U.S. resolution was in large part a sign of support
for Pope John Paul II's famous call during his visit to Cuba for ``the world to
open itself'' to Cuba, the diplomats say.

Castro freed 100 political prisoners just days before that vote, and several
commission members were still smarting over the 1996 Helms-Burton Act's
threatened sanctions against some foreigners who invest in Cuba.

But Havana's recent crackdown on dissidents has angered some commission
members who once believed Cuba was reforming, diplomats say. Uruguay,
which abstained last year, has said it will vote against Cuba this time.

Washington's less visible role this year helped distance the debate from the
context of the U.S.-Cuba confrontation, where the Americans have little
support among the Third World nations that dominate commission votes.

``At least it takes away a bit from the bilateral confrontation, and perhaps this
allows a change in the tone of the debate,'' said Ambassador Victor Lagos of
El Salvador.

U.N. officials with long experience in the Cuba debate say the Czech-Polish
resolution faces an uphill battle.

A four-day delay in this year's vote, requested by Cuba, gave Castro time to
lobby several leaders of member nations at a Caribbean summit held last week
in the Dominican Republic, diplomats said.

Some commission members also have particular concerns related to Cuba. El
Salvador, the only Latin American nation to vote against Havana last year,
recently asked Castro for clemency for two Salvadoran men sentenced to
death in Havana on terrorism charges.

Many nations are simply tired of the annual Cuba debate, one commission
official said, seeing it as a thinly disguised Washington vendetta against a
political foe in a battle that is unlikely to achieve significant change.

``There is `vote fatigue' on Cuba,'' said the official, who has watched six
annual debates. ``It becomes cumbersome to sustain the interest every year
because nothing changes in Cuba, nothing changes in the U.S.''
 

                     Copyright 1999 Miami Herald