By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer

Relations between Cuba and the United States have been frosty for more than 40 years, but a new bilateral low is always just around the corner. First there was the
Cuban Revolution and all the nasty things they said about us. Then the embargo, and those Soviet nuclear missiles. Castro assassination attempts. Cuban
shoot-downs of civilian aircraft. Elian Gonzalez.

This month's nadir came when the leadership of the Cuban National Afghan Association -- that's the longhaired canines, not the turbaned South Asians -- kicked the
top American diplomat in Havana, an ardent Afghan lover and owner, out of their club. Yesterday, the Americans retaliated with the weapon most readily at hand --
ridicule -- and the Cubans themselves launched yet another volley.

The private club's initial letter to U.S. Chief of Mission Vicki Huddleston dated Feb. 6, noted the four decades of hostility between "our people and your
government." It accused Huddleston, a career foreign service officer who has run the U.S. mission in Havana since September 1999, and has been an associate
member of the club since last year, of "stimulating hostility" by meeting with Cuban dissidents and essentially trying to brainwash visiting U.S. students and professors
against Cuba.

"As you will understand," it said, "these facts are incompatible with the morality of our association and our people."

But Huddleston suggested yesterday that the real reason the organization's president, coincidentally named Amalia Castro, wanted her out was to get rid of the
competition that Huddleston's hound, named Havana, posed for Castro's own Afghan in an upcoming dog show scheduled for April. Havana (the dog) is a bouncy
brown and white confection that visitors say is an unavoidable presence at Huddleston's home in Havana (the city).

In an interview with National Public Radio broadcast yesterday morning, Huddleston said Amalia Castro "may have heard a lot of this Cuban anti-United States
government rhetoric and decided to take the opportunity" to promote her own animal at Havana's expense.

Huddleston was chuckling when she said that, so one might presume she was kidding. And Cuban officials in Washington gave a giggle or two of their own when
they called reporters after the broadcast to relay further developments in the case.

But there are few real laughing matters in Cuban-American relations. That's why the Bush administration made sure Huddleston's dog club expulsion was made public
in the first place, and why the normally tight-lipped diplomat emerged to ridicule it on nationwide radio.

And it's why the Cuban government was eager for the latest letter from the Afghan association be added to the mix.

"Distinguished madame," began the new letter, signed by the entire six-person leadership of the Cuban National Afghan Association and dated yesterday. "It has
come to our attention through the international foreign media that there has been a distortion of the letter sent to you on Feb. 6, in which we suggested that you step
down from our association. We wish to clarify that at no point in the letter did we talk about expulsion . . . rather, this was a matter of patriotism and our deep roots
among the Cuban people."

True enough. The original letter did not use the word "expulsion." Instead, it said that the organization would "darle bajo" Huddleston, a term normally used in
Spanish-speaking countries to inform soldiers that they have been dishonorably discharged.

In any case, yesterday's letter said, the association never suggested that Havana (the dog) was not welcome. In no way, it said, was their decision "directed at . . .
Hassan Havana Huddleston, who remains in our association. . . . Considering that both we and Havana have been slandered, we wish to honor and make amends to
the beautiful daughter of Hassan [Havana's sire, apparently famous] . . . at an event which we would like you to dignify with your participation."

No date was set for such an event, but the letter closed with the association's hope that "in the future, we can continue counting on the presence of your magnificent
Havana at our shows, in keeping with all her rights within the association."

Asked for a reaction to the letter, a U.S. official said: "Woof, woof."

                                               © 2001