BY FRANK DAVIES

 WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration Monday denied permission for a top
 Cuban official, Ricardo Alarcón, to meet with members of the Congressional
 Black Caucus and attend a forum with Latin policy experts in the nations capital.

 Alarcón, president of the Cuban National Assembly and a close advisor to Fidel
 Castro, accompanied the Cuban president to the United Nations Millennium
 Summit last week that brought 149 world leaders to New York.

 Alarcóns visa for the U.N. meetings, like Castros, restricted him to 25 miles from
 the center of New York -- and U.S. officials decided not to ease those restrictions.

 A State Department spokesman, Wes Carrington, confirmed Monday that
 Alarcóns request to travel beyond New York had been denied, but gave no further
 explanation.

 ``As a policy we do not allow Cuban officials entering the United States to attend
 U.N. functions to travel outside New York,'' Carrington said.

 Two weeks ago, the State Department refused a visa for Alarcón to attend an
 international parliamentary conference that preceded the U.N. session in New
 York.

 At that time, top U.S. officials cited recent tensions over migration issues
 between the United States and Cuba.

 Secretary of State Madeleine Albright criticized the Cuban government for
 withholding exit permits to Cubans who already hold U.S. visas.

 U.S. officials have complained that Cuba is not living up to the terms of 1994 and
 1995 immigration agreements that were negotiated by Alarcón.

 Election-year politics and some anxiety over President Clintons handshake with
 Castro last week at the United Nations may have also played a part in Mondays
 decision, said a Cuba expert who had invited Alarcón to a meeting planned for
 today with other Latin policy analysts.

 ``It was a high-level decision made after that handshake, and I think the message
 was they dont want to talk about Cuba until after Nov. 7 [election day],'' said Ana
 Julia Jatar, a senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue who met Monday with
 State Department officials.

 The Dialogue, a nonpartisan hemispheric policy center in Washington, had invited
 about 150 analysts, Capitol Hill staffers, economists and journalists to a
 ``wide-open discussion'' with Alarcón.

 ``This shows how discretionary Cuba policy decisions can be,'' Jatar said.

 A spokesman for Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., chairman of the Congressional
 Black Caucus, said the groups leaders were also disappointed that Alarcón was
 denied permission to attend Washington events.