By CAROL ROSENBERG

  U.S. officials are seeking to negotiate access to a deeper Cuban seaport that would allow them to repatriate more rafters more swiftly in the event of a huge migrant
  crisis.

  Currently, the Cuban government allows the Coast Guard to return migrants only to a single port at Bahia de Cabañas. Because it's so shallow, only 110-foot cutters can return migrants picked up at sea.

  Another port would permit larger Coast Guard vessels and more repatriations, said Coast Guard Lt. Tony Russell, spokesman for the Miami District.

  ''It's more of a safety thing than anything else,'' he said.

  Russell added that the Coast Guard has no preferred other port in Cuba.

  There is no current need, he said, to repatriate more than 25 Cubans at a time, the number that a 110-foot cutter can safely accommodate.

  A new port, he said, would serve as "a contingency plan.''

  The issue was highlighted as a sticking point in U.S.-Cuban migration talks in a recent report obtained by The Herald that was sent by the State Department to the
  Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

  According to the Oct. 24 report, sent by Paul Kelly, assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs:

  "Larger cutters are needed when repatriating larger groups of migrants because crowding groups of 25 or more migrants onto a 110-foot cutter could result in unsafe conditions. However, despite our clear safety and security-based arguments, the [government of Cuba] has not permitted the Coast Guard the use of a bigger port that would accommodate large cutters.''

  U.S. and Cuban officials arranged the repatriation system, in which the Coast Guard drops off intercepted migrants and U.S. diplomats later check to see whether they  are harassed for trying to leave, in the 1994 and 1995 U.S.-Cuba Migration Accords.