President Bush signs off on regulations that a diplomat says will stop 'pleasure boating traffic to Cuba.'

BY CAROL ROSENBERG

President Bush on Thursday strengthened emergency powers to choke off previously legal fishing and yacht trips to Cuba.

Since 1996, 1,500 U.S. pleasure boats have received Coast Guard permits to tie up in Cuba, said a U.S. diplomat. Now, after a three-year interagency process, the Bush administration has found a formula ''to stop this pleasure boating traffic to Cuba, which has the effect of putting money in the pocket of the regime,'' the diplomat said.

In Washington, the three Republican Cuban-American Congress members from Miami issued a statement celebrating the move.

Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart called it ``another firm step in the global war on terrorism. . . . President Bush's commendable action will reduce the resources available to the Cuban terrorist regime.''

But in Key West, a charter boat operator who has taken part in Cuban Blue Marlin tournaments based at the Hemingway Marina in Havana lamented it as pre-election political maneuvering.

''If he puts the pressure on Cuba, the Miami Cubans vote for him and get him back in the presidency,'' opined Mark Baumgarten, 46, who said he has tied up his 36-foot Hatteras, The Cowboy, there eight times with Coast Guard permits.

`UNFAIR'

''It's really unfair because everyone from Miami gets to fly over there to see their families and bring over money and medicine,'' he said. ``And, here, they don't want us going over there spreading a few dollars around the marina because they say it's helping Castro. But it's all going to him anyway. It's not making any difference.''

The State Department official, speaking on condition he not be named, said a range of different Bush administration agencies had worked on the measure for three years.

He said the goal was to increase enforcement of the embargo, and denied it was an election-year ploy. ''Honestly, we've been working this for years,'' he said.

Hemingway Marina is known in international sailing circles as an exotic, well-equipped port-of-call; Castro opponents call it an insidious aspect of Cuba's tourism apartheid -- enticing foreign funds for the government rather than ordinary Cubans through a market economy.

Under an earlier 1996 presidential emergency order, pleasure boaters wanting to visit Cuba needed to get a Coast Guard permit, or security pass, to enter Cuban waters legally.

They had to give an itinerary and list of passengers, none of whom could be felons, said Baumgarten. The Coast Guard then issued the permits.

NEW PROCEDURE

Under the mechanism instituted Thursday, would-be boaters must now first get a Commerce Department ''sojourn license,'' the U.S. diplomat said. But they are not issued to pleasure trips.

''This denies American pleasure boaters the ability to travel to Cuba, basically on vacation,'' he said.

President Bush used the 1,365-word proclamation to deliver some tough rhetoric.

He said Castro's government ``has over the course of its 45-year existence repeatedly used violence and the threat of violence to undermine U.S. policy interests. This same regime continues in power today, and has since 1959 maintained a pattern of hostile actions contrary to U.S. policy interests.''

Bush tightened the restrictions the same day he lifted a travel ban on Libya, which was on the U.S. blacklist until it acknowledged responsibility for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988.