Charge imposed by Havana brings cuts in circuits

 BY YVES COLON

 An escalating dispute between the Cuban government and U.S. long-distance carriers has made it increasingly difficult to call the island over the past few days.

 Long-distance carriers say they can't pay a telephone surcharge imposed by Cuba without violating U.S. trade sanctions. Cuba, in turn, has responded by reducing the
 number of incoming lines, causing frustration in South Florida and other communities where Cuban Americans call the island frequently.

 ``We've been hearing that it's getting more difficult to get through,'' said Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, who called it a case of
 ``Fidel Castro playing with people's emotions.''

 Normally, there are 1,022 telephone circuits between the United States and Cuba. It was unclear Monday how many of those circuits remained open, but U.S. phone
 company officials said the number had been greatly reduced.

 ``It used to be that you had to dial five times and eventually, you would get through,'' said Gustavo Alfonso, a spokesman for AT&T in Miami. ``Now you have to try a lot
 harder.''

 After President Castro's government cut direct phone links with the United States in mid-December last year, phone companies like AT&T routed the calls through third
 countries. Now, those third countries are pulling out of the deal because they can't collect a 10 percent surcharge imposed by Cuba in order to place the call.
 `DIFFICULT SITUATION'

 ``We can't pay them beyond what had been established as the rate we pay them,'' Alfonso said. ``We cannot go beyond that. It's a very difficult situation.''

 Several phone companies that provide service to Cuba, including AT&T and Sprint, cannot pay the surcharge without violating laws administered by the Office of Foreign
 Assets Control, a branch of the U.S. Treasury that enforces economic and trade sanctions against targeted countries.

 Luis Fernández, a spokesman for the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, said the phone lines will be reopened when the United States ``pays all the funds that
 belong to the Cuban people and were stolen by the U.S. government.''

 ``As soon as they pay all these things, no problem, then we'll open the lines,'' Fernández said. ``The only possible negotiation is for them to pay these funds.''

 The funds in question are $58 million in damages a Miami judge awarded to families of Brothers to the Rescue pilots shot down by Cuban MiGs in February 1996. The
 money was taken from frozen Cuban assets in U.S. banks.

 Cuba earns about $80 million a year from the phone traffic, and Castro's government wants the additional $30 million surcharge to make up, in part, for the $58 million
 judgment.

 After Cuba cut off most of the circuits on Dec. 15, the majority of calls were routed through third countries such as Canada and Italy, using carriers in those countries. An
 Italian phone company owns a large share of the Cuban telephone system.
 TRAFFIC MEASURED

 As Cuba warned it would do, government officials have measured the level of incoming traffic on lines from those third countries over the past three months with the level
 during the same period one year earlier.

 Wherever they found that the number of calls had increased dramatically, they have assumed that the increase was attributed to the United States, tacking on the 10
 percent surcharge.

 These third-country phone companies in turn have tried to pass along the surcharge to American carriers by charging a higher rate for the calls. But the law forbids U.S.
 carriers to pay.

 ``It's making it very difficult,'' Alfonso said.

 In February 1999, Cuba cut its phone circuits over the same issue: frozen funds held in U.S. banks. The Cuban phone company suspended service with U.S.
 long-distance carriers because they withheld $19 million due Cuba. The companies were ordered to hold the money while the families of Brothers to the Rescue pilots
 tried to collect $187 million in damages. Payments from the U.S. companies to Cuba were re-authorized by the federal government that March, and Cuba reopened its
 phone circuits to the United States.
 Meanwhile, Cuban Americans are getting increasingly frustrated at being cut off from relatives on the island. Alfonso compares this latest episode between Cuba and the
 United States to chest-thumping games.

 ``I don't know who's going to blink first,'' he said. ``We don't know where this is heading, we really don't.'

                                    © 2001