By Karen DeYoung
                  Washington Post Staff Writer
                  Monday, December 13, 1999; Page A19

                  HAVANA—Cuba says the United States promotes the smuggling of
                  illegal immigrants by sea to Florida even as it professes to want to stop the
                  practice. Washington says Havana impedes the legal emigration of Cuban
                  physicians and other medical personnel to the United States in violation of
                  existing agreements.

                  While the fate of one small Cuban boy found floating off the Florida coast
                  has dominated relations between the two countries in recent weeks, they
                  have a lot more to talk about when they sit down here today for their
                  regularly scheduled, biannual meeting on immigration.

                  The meetings are held under a 1994 agreement to stem what was then an
                  alarmingly high rate of Cubans leaving the island to cross the Florida Straits
                  in unseaworthy craft. Many of them drowned, just like the mother of
                  6-year-old Elian Gonzalez, who died along with nine other people when
                  their small boat capsized last month.

                  The agreement, and a 1995 addendum, specify that Cubans intercepted at
                  sea by the U.S. Coast Guard, with a few exceptions, will be returned to
                  Cuba. The United States also pledged to stop admitting "all Cuban
                  migrants who reach U.S. territory in irregular ways." Cuba promised to
                  patrol its shores and waters to discourage departures, and to take no
                  reprisals against those brought back.

                  To make immigration more orderly, Washington agreed to admit at least
                  20,000 Cubans a year, many of them chosen by lottery, and Cuba agreed
                  to facilitate their departure.

                  The agreements are short and fairly simple. But the intrusion of politics,
                  ideology and mutual suspicion has complicated their implementation, with
                  problems arising as the always difficult relations between the two countries
                  reach periodic boiling points.

                  Many Cubans want to leave; that is indisputable. When the last visa lottery
                  was held in 1998, more than 500,000 of the island's 11 million people
                  applied. Between 1994 and 1998, 110,092 Cubans were admitted to the
                  United States legally under the accords.

                  It is the ones who continue to leave illegally that Havana wants to discuss in
                  this round of talks. Cuba maintains that the United States entices people to
                  make the perilous voyage by regularly broadcasting descriptions of the
                  island's economic deprivation on U.S. government radio. This is
                  particularly irritating to Havana, which says the U.S. economic embargo is
                  a principal cause of that deprivation. In addition, Cuba says that the new
                  U.S. "wet feet-dry feet" policy of allowing those Cubans who actually
                  touch shore to stay is a specific violation of the agreements.

                  That policy, said Ricardo Alarcon, president of the Cuban National
                  Assembly and chief Cuban negotiator in the talks, has promoted what both
                  countries agree is a rise in human smuggling.

                  "The most important issue we have to discuss, in my opinion, is smuggling,"
                  Alarcon said. Nowhere in the agreements "has the U.S. or Cuba said that
                  those who arrive there have guaranteed admission. In fact, the only
                  reference is in the opposite direction."

                  Cuba sees the case of the Gonzalez boy as valuable support for arguments
                  made during talks last spring. "Elian is an example of the extremes to which
                  the situation can go," Alarcon said. "If people weren't encouraged to land,
                  they would not be encouraged to leave like Elian's mother."

                  According to Dan Geohegan, assistant chief of the Miami region of the
                  U.S. Border Patrol, more than 2,000 Cubans have landed there illegally by
                  boat this year--nearly twice as many as in the four previous years
                  combined. About 1,000 have been interdicted at sea by the U.S. Coast
                  Guard and sent home this year.

                  Geohegan said the increase in illegal arrivals is largely due to the rise in
                  professional smugglers, usually Cuban Americans who he said collect
                  $7,000 to $9,000 from relatives in the United States to pick up passengers
                  with speedboats at clandestine spots along the Cuban coast.

                  The smugglers, he said, "have the same techniques as the drug smugglers.
                  They have Global Positioning Systems, cellular technology, night-vision
                  goggles and boats that sit low in the water to defeat the radar. They have
                  everything the doper has."

                  Existing U.S. law appears contradictory on whether illegally arriving
                  Cubans are allowed to stay. Under the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, all
                  Cubans who reach the United States, by any means, are eligible to be
                  admitted. When questions were raised after the 1994 and 1995
                  agreements seemed to say something different, administration spokesmen
                  pointed out that the 1966 act gives the attorney general discretionary
                  power over admissions. The accords say only that not "all" will be allowed
                  to stay, but do not say which ones will be.

                  In April, a "clarification" memo from Immigration and Naturalization
                  Service Commissioner Doris Meissner to INS field offices said that any
                  Cuban national otherwise eligible for admission under the 1966 act would
                  not become ineligible simply by arriving illegally, and would be entitled to
                  all advantages given other Cubans, including work permits and the
                  opportunity to become a permanent resident.

                  Current U.S. policy, as practiced by federal authorities in southern Florida,
                  is that those with "dry feet"--those who reach U.S. soil--may stay. The
                  policy has occasionally resulted in human tugs of war between federal
                  authorities and Cuban Americans trying to drag ashore people dropped by
                  smugglers near the beach.

                  Alarcon charged that the United States has done little to apprehend and
                  prosecute alien smugglers, insisting that only one such case has been
                  prosecuted in U.S. courts. He said Cuba has more than 50 Cuban
                  Americans in jail on smuggling charges but the United States has not
                  responded to an offer to turn some of them over for U.S. prosecution.

                  U.S. officials said that the cases presented by Cuba would not have stood
                  up in American courts. At the same time, in an indication of how far apart
                  the two governments are on the basic facts of the situation, they said 43
                  smuggling cases were successfully prosecuted in 1998.

                  While Cuba is determined to press the smuggling and admittance issues at
                  the talks, U.S. negotiators are equally determined to insist that Cuba keep
                  its end of the immigration bargain. U.S. officials who asked not to be
                  named said that Havana has refused to issue exit permits to medical
                  personnel deemed essential on the island, despite the fact that the accords
                  make no provision for such selective prohibitions.

                  U.S. officials said they also are concerned that reprisals are taken against
                  Cubans brought back by the Coast Guard. Under the agreements, U.S.
                  consular officials here try to visit every repatriated islander within six
                  months to make sure they are not being mistreated. Officials said they were
                  concerned that some of the Cubans were deprived of employment and that
                  others were harassed by local Communist Party organizations.

                  Staff researcher Robert Thomason contributed to this report.
 

                           © Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company