By CAROL ROSENBERG
Herald Staff Writer

In an unusual about-face, at least five of 12 Cubans who were recently
resettled in Uruguay are asking to move back to the U.S. Naval Base at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the Clinton administration housed them for
months to discourage rafters from fleeing their island nation.

``There's no provision for them to go back to Guantanamo. No one in this
situation has gone back,'' said State Department Cuba Desk diplomat Robert
Featherstone. ``We understand that they're having trouble adjusting, but it's
quite soon. They just got off the plane.''

The dozen Cubans, who range from teenagers to adults and include small
families, arrived April 21 in Montevideo after agreeing, in writing, to a
resettlement arrangement worked out between Washington and the Uruguayan
government. The deal gives them stipends and helps them find jobs and
housing.

But Tuesday, the foreign office in Montevideo summoned U.S. Ambassador
Christopher Ashby for a meeting on the reluctance by at least five Cubans to
accept the resettlement, according to an embassy spokesman.

Jose Maria Araneo, director of political and economic affairs for Uruguay's
Foreign Ministry, told the EFE news agency that Montevideo accepted the
Cubans as ``an act of solidarity and for humanitarian reasons, but now we find
ourselves in the middle of a problem that is not ours.''

``Seven of those Cuban immigrants apparently are agreeing to stay in Uruguay,
to receive American economic help, to look for permanent residence and
work,'' Araneo said. But the ``other five want to return to Guantanamo, and
this matter must be resolved by the U.S. authorities.''

Three among the dozen took part in a hunger strike at the base to protest their
protracted stays at Guantanamo, according to Pedro Solares of the Miami
human rights group Agenda: Cuba. Some people who took part in the strike
had been on the base for more than a year. But Agenda: Cuba was unable to
determine Wednesday whether any of those balking at the resettlement were
former hunger-strikers.

Jorge Acosta of Agenda: Cuba said Wednesday that he had not spoken with
the Cubans spurning resettlement. But he speculated they had hoped they
could swiftly move on to new lives in Miami and realized soon after they
arrived in Montevideo that was not possible.

About 50 Cubans are still being held in a dormitory-style detention center at
the Guantanamo Bay base, where a few have part-time, paying jobs. Some
swam through the bay or walked through Cuban mine fields to request asylum.

Others were intercepted at sea by the Coast Guard, which has government
officials interview Cuban rafters to see if they have a fear of persecution if they
are repatriated. Most are returned immediately. But the few who make it to
the base have their cases reexamined on the island and, if they are deemed to
be subject to persecution, are held on the base until the State Department finds
a third country to repatriate them.

If they are not granted U.S. protection, they are returned to the Cuban side of
the island through a gate in the base's 17-mile barbed-wire fence.

The Clinton administration created the third-country resettlement policy amid
the 1994-95 rafter crisis to try to convince Cubans that the only way to
resettle in the United States is to apply for visas at the U.S. Interest Section in
Havana.

The State Department's Featherstone said the disorientation of the migrants
was understandable, but ``there is no provision for bringing them back'' to
Guantanamo, which was just a holding station while a third country was found
to take them.

A social agency in Montevideo was helping to resettle the dozen, he said, and
``the Uruguayans have made a generous offer that meets all the international
standards'' for resettling people who fear persecution in their own country.

e-mail: crosenberg@herald.com

                     Copyright 1999 Miami Herald