BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

                    Jimmy Carter in Cuba tenaciously pressed George W. Bush to end the U.S.
                    embargo, while more gently urging democratization on Fidel Castro. What
                    disrupted the former president's plan was talk that the Cuban dictator may be
                    developing biological warfare weapons for rogue nations. An irritated Carter
                    blamed the Bush administration for raising the issue.

                    In and out of office, Carter has ignored facts that disturb his world view. In Cuba
                    last week, he accepted Castro's word that Cuba is not developing bioweapons.
                    What's more, he prompted an attack on a conservative State Department official
                    for even suggesting it.

                    Actually, Cuban capability for biowarfare was determined by the CIA and
                    approved for public consumption. That conflicts with Castro's charm offensive
                    and congressional efforts to admit Communist Cuba to the family of respectable
                    nations. Carter and other advocates of normalization must ignore Castro's ties
                    with rogue nations, connections with international drug trafficking and previous
                    use of forbidden weapons. In January 1989, my late partner, Rowland Evans,
                    and I exposed evidence of Cuban troops in Angola using poison gas.

                    A week before Carter's Cuba visit, Undersecretary of State John Bolton in a
                    speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation suggested Cuba possesses
                    bio-war potential and has supplied technology to ''other rogue nations.''

                    Touring the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Havana, Carter
                    informed Castro that ''on more than one occasion'' he was told by ''our experts in
                    intelligence'' there was no evidence to back up Bolton.

                    Bolton then came under withering attack as a radical rightist deviating from the
                    Bush administration line. In fact, he is a distinguished member of the
                    conservative movement. A Washington lawyer, he served as an assistant
                    secretary of state and assistant attorney general in previous Republican
                    administrations before becoming senior vice president of the American
                    Enterprise Institute. His nomination to head arms control and international
                    security in the State Department was delayed for two months by Senate
                    Democrats on grounds of ''philosophy'' and ''temperament.'' He finally was
                    confirmed, 50-43.

                    In mid-February this year, Bolton asked the intelligence community for an
                    assessment of Cuba and bioweapons. CIA analysts produced a brief summary,
                    which was then approved as official U.S. government doctrine. However, Bolton
                    had no immediate use for the material. There the matter stood until Carl Ford,
                    assistant secretary of state for Intelligence, on March 19 testified to the Senate
                    Foreign Relations Committee about chemical and biological weapons.

                    Unknown to Bolton, Ford read, word for word, the government- approved
                    language that had been drafted in response to Bolton: ''The United States
                    believes that Cuba has at least a limited developmental offensive biological
                    warfare research and development effort. Cuba has provided dual-use
                    biotechnology to rogue states. We are concerned that such technology could
                    support BW [biological warfare] programs in those states. We call on Cuba to
                    cease all BW-applicable cooperation with rogue states.''

                    Carter is the only former president with his own foreign policy think tank (the
                    Carter Center in Atlanta). It is, therefore, astonishing that he could have been
                    unaware of Ford's testimony and learned of the U.S. intelligence assessment
                    only from Bolton two months later. When Secretary of State Colin Powell was
                    asked about Bolton's comments during an airborne press conference en route
                    home from Iceland, he replied: ''This is not a new statement.''

                    Two leaders trying to normalize relations with Castro--Sen. Christopher Dodd,
                    chairman of the Western Hemisphere subcommittee, and his staffer Janice
                    O'Connell--pushed for a quick hearing targeting Bolton in the dock. He was
                    unavailable (in Moscow to prepare for the summit), but he still deserves a
                    chance to repudiate the canard that he was free-lancing. Indeed, Jimmy Carter
                    might well be requested to name his ''experts in intelligence'' who allegedly
                    contradicted the U.S. government's position.