By Karen DeYoung and Eric Pianin. Washington Post Staff Writers.

Cuba has indefinitely postponed an upcoming round of biannual migration talks with the United States, citing its "preoccupation with the return of Elian Gonzalez as the reason," the State Department said yesterday.

The talks, held twice yearly under agreements signed by Havana and Washington in 1994 and 1995 to regularize the flow of Cuban immigrants to this country, were due to begin in New York on June 27. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States had told Cuba it "strenuously objected to the last-minute postponement," signaled by Havana Friday.

Fernando Remirez, head of the Cuban Interests Section here, confirmed yesterday that officials in Havana felt it was "very difficult to engage in talks while [the Elian] issue is pending." But, he said, Cuba does not intend the postponement as a protest, and emphasized that "we are very committed to the immigration agreements and want to continue" the discussions.

In addition to the continued legal delays in sending the 6-year-old shipwreck victim home, U.S. officials speculated that Havana is preoccupied with the uncertain fate of congressional proposals for easing U.S. economic sanctions against the island.

A measure to loosen long-standing restrictions on sales of food and medicine to Cuba has passed the Senate, but it is embroiled in a fierce House debate that has pitted the anti-sanctions GOP leadership against farm-state Republicans joined with liberal Democrats and church and humanitarian groups.

A fiscal 2001 agricultural spending bill has been held in limbo for weeks since anti-sanctions Republicans succeeded in attaching a measure prohibiting unilateral restrictions on U.S. food and medicine sales to Cuba and several other countries. House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) failed last month in an effort to strike the measure from the bill, and attempts to find a compromise have failed.

Rep. George R. Nethercutt (R-Wash.), the sponsor of the anti-sanctions language, contends he has enough votes to block the agriculture spending bill unless he and his allies prevail, and a Nethercutt spokesman said yesterday that he was on the verge of an agreement with the House leadership. "We have a very bright future for the idea of sanctions relief this session," said spokesman Tom McArthur. "It looks like it will happen sooner than later."

Among possible compromises cited were provisions for cash-only sales and continuing restrictions on government or commercial credits for Cuba, along with prohibitions against barter arrangements that would allow Cuban imports to enter this country.

But Cuban American members of Congress and lobbyists against the measure insisted that a compromise is still far away, and said they will not yield on their basic insistence that sanctions be kept in place. "There is no solid or tentative agreement," a spokesman for DeLay said.

A leadership aide added: "For [Nethercutt] to declare victory is laughable."

Remirez, Cuba's chief diplomat here, said it is "difficult not to have expectations" that attitudes in Washington toward Cuba are shifting. But he insisted that postponement of the New York talks was related only to the Elian issue.

Under the bilateral migration accords, the United States agreed to discourage migrants arriving illegally, to allow at least 20,000 Cubans to immigrate legally each year, and to return to Cuba all those found at sea who cannot demonstrate a legitimate fear of persecution. So far this year, 484 Cubans have been picked up by the U.S. Coast Guard in the Florida Straits, compared with 1,463 for all of 1999. Most have been returned to Cuba.

For its part, Cuba agreed to patrol its waters to discourage illegal departures, to facilitate the departure of those who qualified for legal migration, and not to take reprisals against those who are returned. The two governments also agreed to cooperate on the safe interdiction of illegal migrants at sea. Several months ago, a U.S. Coast Guard officer was permanently stationed at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana.

The biannual talks provide an opportunity to discuss and complain about implementation of the accords. In recent sessions, the United States has charged that Cuba has restricted the legal departure of trained professionals, as well as the families of individuals who have left illegally.

Cuba has said that a de facto U.S. policy of allowing entry to all illegal migrants who manage to make it to U.S. soil--the so-called wet-feet, dry-feet policy--is a violation of the agreements and encourages the illegal migration that the accords were designed to curtail.

U.S. Drops Term 'Rogue State'

By Steven Mufson. Washington Post Staff Writer. Tuesday, June 20, 2000; Page A16

The rogue states of the world have vanished--at least from the rhetoric of the State Department.

Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright said in a National Public Radio interview yesterday that henceforth nasty, untrustworthy, missile-equipped countries will be known as "states of concern."

"I think it would be fair to say that we think the category has outlived its usefulness," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said later, explaining the altered state of departmental vocabulary. "It's not really a change in behavior or policy or what we're doing as much as it is finding a better description or a different description, because a single description, 'one size fits all,' doesn't really fit anymore."

For years, the Clinton administration has found the term "rogue state" extremely useful to describe countries Albright once said "are there with the sole purpose of destroying the system." It was used to justify a policy of "dual containment" against Iraq and Iran in the mid-1990s. At other times the "rogue" label has been attached to North Korea, Cuba, Libya and Sudan. In September 1997, Albright said "dealing with rogue states is one of the great challenges of our time," adding that they constituted one of four distinct categories of countries in the post-Cold War world. (The other three were advanced industrial states, emerging democracies and failed states.)

More recently, the rogue rubric has been used to justify plans for a U.S. national missile defense system. Only last week, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen employed the term on Russian state television. "I came to explain the United States's position in terms of the nature of the threat that we face from rogue states and the nature of a limited national missile defense system that would be directed against a North Korea, an Iran, Iraq, or other so-called rogue states," he said.

The term has been taken up by members of Congress, too. References to "rogue state" or "rogue nation" in the Congressional Record increased from three during the 1991-92 session to 12 in 1993-94, 58 in 1995-96 and 75 in 1997-98.

Now, without any breakthrough in missile defense technology, feat of delicate diplomacy or bolt of enlightenment in the capitals of Iran, North Korea, Libya or Iraq, the term has been relegated to the State Department's dustbin of history.

Boucher said, however, that purging "rogue states" from the official lexicon did not mean the Clinton administration was going soft on the States Formerly Known As Rogues.

"If we see a development that we think is in U.S. interest, we will respond--if we see 'states of concern' that continue to be of concern because they are not willing to deal with some of the issues we are concerned about," he said, narrowly circumventing a state of confusion. "Whew!" he added.

Boucher also insisted that Albright was not signaling a postponement of President Clinton's scheduled decision on whether to go ahead with a limited national defense system.

Many experts saw the change in terminology as a sign that the administration wants flexibility to pursue different policies toward Iran, where moderates are making electoral gains; North Korea, where a reclusive dictator is cracking open the door to the outside world; Libya, which has turned over two suspected terrorists to an international court; and Iraq, which is gaining sympathy in the U.N. after years of American and British bombing.

Robert S. Litwak, director of international studies at the Woodrow Wilson Center and a National Security Council staff member under Clinton, said the dropping of the term "rogue state" would permit more latitude in U.S. policy.

"The term inhibits the ability of policy makers to adapt to changed conditions and is rejected by the U.S.'s major allies," said Litwak, author of "Rogue States and U.S. Foreign Policy." "No longer thinking of this very disparate group of states as a specific category . . . will permit the necessary differentiation to deal with each country in its own terms."

At the press briefing yesterday, Boucher would not list all the countries that are considered "states of concern."

"We don't sit around here with a basket marked 'states of concern' and try to throw countries into it every day," he said. "We actually grab situations and try to work on them and improve the interests of the United States with regard to that situation."

Researcher Robert Thomason contributed to this report.

© 2000 The Washington Post Company