CUBA TO AID U.S. ANTI-DRUG EFFORT

WASHINGTON -- Cuba has tentatively accepted two U.S. requests to enhance
antinarcotics cooperation between the countries, even as leading Republican
lawmakers portray the nation as a major trafficker, U.S. and Cuban sources
said.

Cuban officials have told U.S. diplomats they are willing to let the
Clinton administration station an anti-narcotics agent at the U.S. mission
in Havana, and would be prepared to collaborate on a continuing basis. If
final details are worked out, the agent would probably be a Coast Guard
officer equipped with electronic devices to detect drugs in containers.

Cuba has also agreed to upgrade its communication links with Coast Guard
officials, allowing for voice contacts between enforcement authorities and
a secure radio link, the sources said. Currently, Coast Guard officials
contact their counterparts by fax on a case-by-case basis and use radio
frequencies that can easily be monitored by traffickers.

The government of President Fidel Castro has proposed, moreover, that both
countries meet on a regular basis to discuss antinarcotics operations. But
administration officials are cool to that idea, saying Havana is seeking to
build its political legitimacy through routine contacts.

Administration officials on Wednesday sought to downplay Cuba's agreement
just seven weeks after they traveled to Havana to ask for the changes.
Republican lawmakers harshly criticized the visit and have called on the
President to halt intelligence sharing with Cuba and subject the island to
penalties as a major trafficking nation.

An administration official who is monitoring the contacts with Cuba
minimized the progress Wednesday as part of an ongoing effort.

"This is not revolutionary and new," he said, after asking not to be named.
Antidrug cooperation with Cuba, he said, "is something that has had
concrete success in the past. This is a way to systematize it in the future."

But on Capitol Hill, some Republican lawmakers were swift to condemn any
effort to upgrade relations. The Cubans are seizing on U.S. concerns over
drugs to try to open a broader political dialogue, said Marc Thiessen,
spokesman for Sen. Jesse Helms, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

"They see it as a path toward normal relations with the United States and a
chance to whitewash their drug record," Thiessen said.

Drug-smuggling is the most prominent of several national security concerns
involving Cuba that have recently pitted the Clinton administration against
hard-line anti-Castro lawmakers. In recent years, Castro foes have
denounced Cuba's intermittent construction of a Soviet-style nuclear power
plant, the potential for mischief by its biotech industry and the Soviet
eavesdropping post at Lourdes.

The administration has long maintained that it benefits from antinarcotics
cooperation with Havana. Drug czar Barry McCaffrey recently said there is
"no conclusive evidence to indicate that the Cuban leadership is currently
involved in this criminal activity." U.S. officials praise Cuban
cooperation for netting nearly eight tons of cocaine aboard a Honduran
freighter in 1996.

But anti-Castro Republicans point to a seizure in Colombia last December of
7 1/2 tons of cocaine bound for Cuba through a Spanish-Cuban firm. Rep.
Benjamin Gilman, chairman of the International Relations Committee, has
demanded an investigation into the incident and asked that Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright list Cuba as a nation subject to an annual process
certifying that it is combating drugs in good faith.