Herald Staff Report

 Cuba has canceled a visit by 38 U.S. newspaper editorial writers in retaliation for
 The Herald's coverage of Cuba's earlier refusal to grant a visa to a Herald editorial
 writer as part of the delegation.

 Members of the National Conference of Editorial Writers (NCEW) delegation
 scheduled to visit Cuba Jan. 23-30 were advised of the cancellation Thursday in
 an e-mail message signed by trip leader Bob Kittle of The San Diego
 Union-Tribune and Dave Hage, of The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, chairman of the
 group's international affairs committee.

 ``The NCEW's planned trip to Cuba later this month has been canceled after the
 Cuban government said it would deny visas to all 38 members of the NCEW
 delegation,'' the message said. ``The Castro government took the action after The
 Miami Herald published a news story and editorial regarding Cuba's earlier refusal
 to allow a Herald editorial writer to take part in the trip.''

 Kittle said he had been notified of the cancellation this week by a representative
 of the Cuban government who cited three reasons:

 The Herald's effort to join the trip.

 A statement by Hage to a Herald reporter expressing the NCEW's disappointment
 that Cuba had denied The Herald a visa.

 Concern by Cuban authorities that NCEW members were making ``parallel''
 reporting arrangements, with assistance from the U.S. State Department,
 separate from the official briefings arranged by the Cuban government.

 Tom Fiedler, Herald editorial page editor, said Thursday that The Herald had
 attempted ``from the beginning to reassure all of [the delegation members] that
 we didn't want the Cuban government's problems with this newspaper to in any
 way interfere with their opportunity to evaluate firsthand the results of 41 years of
 Castroism.''

 ``Although it was against our wishes,'' Fiedler said, ``many of them urged that
 NCEW cancel the trip entirely, arguing that to allow the Cuban government to
 select who could participate was a dangerous precedent.

 ``So it's ironic that the Castro government preempted that debate by canceling the
 visas of our colleagues seemingly out of its irritation over those protests. That act
 describes more eloquently than words the Cuban government's contempt for the
 free press,'' Fiedler said.

 Kittle and Hage, in their message Thursday to delegation members, called such a
 ``last-minute reversal of this kind by a foreign government . . . unprecedented in
 NCEW experience.''

 The Herald had submitted a visa application for Susana Barciela, a
 Cuban-American member of The Herald's editorial board, to participate in the
 delegation, and offered Fiedler as an alternate.

 Hage, in comments to The Herald that were cited as among the reasons for the
 trip's cancellation, said the group was ``very frustrated and disappointed'' and that
 the rejection would ``absolutely be an issue of discussion in some form'' when
 delegation members met with Cuban officials.

 A Dec. 28 Herald editorial on the rejection asked in a headline: What is Castro
 Afraid Of?

 The editorial called the rejection ``another example of the Castro regime's
 determination to try to control the flow of information from the island by selecting
 who can report it.''

 On Thursday, Herald Publisher Alberto Ibargüen issued the following statement:

 ``Fidel Castro is a dictator. Nothing better illustrates how totalitarians act than
 when they're subjected to inquiry by a free press: They shut everything down so
 they can control totally. This ham-handed refusal to let open-minded editorial
 writers have a peek inside their closed society is typical of this regime. People
 who believe in democracy, yet romanticize the revolutionary Castro, should
 remember this incident.''

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald