By CAROL ROSENBERG

             Herald Staff Writer

             GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- Cuban refugees who waged a
             hunger strike for nearly a month have begun eating normally and -- although one
             dropped 32 pounds -- suffered no long-term damage, their doctor said Thursday.

             Navy Lt. George Morris, the physician who handled the case of the 18 hunger
             strikers who resumed eating on Saturday, said in an interview that the Cubans'
             conditions were ``very good. All of them have suffered no irreparable, permanent
             harm.''

             Twenty-eight of the approximately 60 Cubans being detained here while the U.S.
             immigration service and State Department determine their fate declared the hunger
             strike Feb. 14 to protest their prolonged internment.

             When they quit the strike, March 13, they numbered 18, Morris said. They ranged
             in age from 19 to 61.

             On average, each participant lost 10 percent of his or her body weight. But a
             176-pound, 32-year-old man dropped to 144 pounds. But, as of Thursday,
             Morris reported, ``he's regaining weight. He has a good spring in his step.''

             The doctor was made available to The Herald after both Defense and State
             Department officials refused repeated requests to speak with the Cubans directly.

             Shielded from press

             Tom Gerth of the State Department's Cuba Desk said the Cubans were being
             shielded from the press to not complicate efforts to find them third countries to
             accept them as refugees. Further, another State Department official said U.S.
             government policy prohibited interviews with detainees, even on condition they are
             not named, for fear their families in Cuba would suffer reprisals.

             Gerth said that the hunger strikers decided to eat because they concluded, ``It was
             counterproductive to injure their health, they had to look to their futures.''

             Miami attorney Wilfredo Allen said the hunger strikers were picked up at sea by
             the U.S. Coast Guard and taken to Guantanamo after shipboard interviews found
             they might be persecuted at home. Once on Guantanamo, their cases were
             reexamined and immigration officials classified them with special ``protected''
             status.

             U.S. entry denied

             But Clinton administration policy forbids them from being brought to the United
             States. The U.S. government is determined to send ``protected'' Cubans to a third
             country -- as a way of signaling to Cubans that the only way to come to the United
             States is by applying at the U.S. Interest Section in Havana.

             Navy Base Commander Capt. Larry Larson said no Cuban admitted to
             Guantanamo under protective status has been allowed to enter the United States
             since before he took command of the base in April 1997.

             Cubans with protective status or having their cases evaluated by the immigration
             service include rafters found at sea by the Coast Guard and people who walked
             through a minefield or swam over from sovereign Cuba.

             ``What the government is doing is wrong,'' Allen said in Miami. ``To have people
             like that in limbo when they have the opportunity to bring them to the United States
             -- where's the hope?''

             Relaying information

             Allen is acting as a pro-bono attorney for Agenda: Cuba, a Miami-based group
             that took up the hunger striker's crusade, and relayed information about their fate.

             ``To me the fact that they can not be brought to the United States is ridiculous,''
             Allen said.

             For privacy reasons, U.S. authorities refuse to identify the hunger strikers. The
             group Agenda: Cuba has identified one as Placido Hernandez, a dissident
             journalist who left Cuba by sea after he was threatened with arrest.

             Cubans not granted protective status by immigration adjudicators are escorted to a
             gate in the base's 17-mile perimeter fence guarded by Marine sharpshooters --
             and dispatched to the other side.

             Those with protective status wait until the State Department finds them host
             countries. Meantime, Larson said, some are working for dollar wages among other
             civilian laborers on the base. One is a waitress at a restaurant serving members of
             the military and their families. Another sorts materials in a recycling plant.