Key Latin nations resist effort to condemn Cuba

Sponsors: Elian case a factor

 JUAN O. TAMAYO

 A campaign to condemn Cuba's human rights record before a respected U.N. agency, set for
 a vote today, has run into unexpected resistance from three Western nations and
 opposition over the Elian Gonzalez case, sponsors say.

 ``I wouldn't say we have a problem. It's tough, but our chances are reasonable,'' said Deputy
 Foreign Minister Martin Palous of the Czech Republic, cosponsor with Poland of the resolution
admonishing Cuba before the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

 The commission has condemned President Fidel Castro's regime at eight of its
 past nine annual meetings in Geneva, in votes that carry no sanctions but put
 Havana on the U.N. list of major human rights abusers such as Iraq.

 But the ballots are always extremely close -- last year's vote was 21-20 against
 Cuba, with 12 abstentions -- reflecting the bruising lobbying for each and every
 nation's vote.

 U.N. officials in Geneva said procedural delays and the usually long speeches
 made by delegates could push the vote back to Wednesday.

 For the last two years, the Czech Republic and Poland have replaced Washington
 as lead sponsors of the resolutions on Cuba, using their status as former victims
 of communism to attack Castro's authoritarian regime and remove the vote from
 the jaded arena of U.S.-Cuba confrontation.

 But Palous and other foreign diplomats in Geneva said this year's vote on Cuba
 may fall short because of a reluctance to condemn Havana by three key nations
 normally aligned with Western views on human rights abuses.

 Diplomats in Geneva said Chile and Argentina, which voted to condemn Cuba last
 year, have signaled that they may abstain from this year's ballot under domestic
 political pressure.

 The Socialist Party of Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, elected in January, has a
 history of close relations with Cuba dating to the Salvador Allende government in
 the early 1970s.

 Argentine President Fernando de la Rua, sworn into office in December, does not
 want to be seen as following the footsteps of his predecessor, Carlos Menem, a
 vocal Castro critic, the diplomats in Geneva said.

 Late Monday, a senior Argentine official said his government received a call from
 the Clinton administration earlier in the day expressing concern over its U.N. vote.
 The official said Argentina had not reached a decision on how it would vote, but
 suggested it was leaning toward casting its ballot to condemn Cuba.

 Spain, a new member of the U.N. panel, was also threatening to abstain because
 of U.S. efforts to sanction the Spanish-owned Sol-Melia firm under the
 Helms-Burton law for building hotels on Cuban lands seized from U.S. owners by
 the Castro regime, diplomats in Geneva said.

 Palous said he hopes other nations that backed Cuba in 1999 will switch this
 year, but added that the Elian Gonzalez case has made it ``slightly more difficult''
 to win support.

 Many countries on the human rights commission, whose 53 members are
 carefully chosen to reflect the United Nations' overall makeup, view the tug-of-war
 over the 6-year-old shipwreck survivor as a throwback to the U.S.-Cuba
 confrontations of the Cold War, he said.

 The Czech-Polish resolution expresses concern over Cuba's repression of all
 political opposition and arrests of dissidents and human rights activists, and calls
 on Castro to free all political prisoners.

 Herald staff writer Andres Oppenheimer contributed to this report.