Tough start to US-Cuba refugee talks

TALKS between Cuba and the United States, aimed at ending the refugee crisis, got off to a 'serious and businesslike' start yesterday, according to US officials. But there was little early sign of a breakthrough that would persuade the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, to halt the exodus of boat people from the island - more than 22,000 in August.

A US spokesman, David Johnson, said last night the first day of talks in New York had dwelt exclusively on emigration, as Washington has all along insisted. The Cuban team, however, led by Ricardo Alarcon, a veteran diplomat and president of the Havana parliament, wants the talks to embrace other issues, above all the US embargo, which the Castro regime says has crippled the economy.

As the two sides sparred diplomatically at the US mission at the United Nations, the flow of refugees continued unabated. After picking up 2,159 boat people on Wednesday, US Coast Guard vessels stationed just outside Cuban territorial waters in the Straits of Florida had picked up 700 more by mid-afternoon yesterday.

Even the well-advertised certainty of being sent to the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, in south-eastern Cuba, is acting less as a deterrent than a magnet. More than 15,000 Cubans are being held there. This week hundreds more have taken a short-cut to join them, entering the base by boat from ports on the island's southern shore or by swimming.

Three were injured when, along with 20 others, they tried to cross the Cuban minefields barring a land entry into the Guantanamo Bay enclave.

The best hope for agreement seems to lie in a US undertaking vastly to increase the number of legal entry visas granted to Cubans, from around 3,000 a year to 20,000 or more. This would achieve the two countries' avowed common goal of 'orderly' emigration to the US. But there is no guarantee it alone will satisfy Havana's demands, which, apart from a lifting of the embargo, include the return of Guantanamo Bay to Cuba, and an end to US radio propaganda beamed into the island.

The negotiations in New York will probably last several days. Adding urgency to Washington's quest for a deal is the crisis in neighbouring Haiti, where a US- led invasion - perhaps before the end of this month - now seems inevitable. Haiti's military leaders have taken advantage of Washington's distraction with Cuba to become even more intransigent, arranging the weekend murder of a prominent priest and supporter of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Cuban officials meanwhile vehemently deny reports that jails have been opened to allow convicts to flee to the US - as happened during the 1980 Mariel boatlift, whose memory stalks the Clinton administration.

(Photograph omitted)