BY ANA RADELAT
 Special to The Herald

 WASHINGTON -- A childhood brush with Fidel Castro's government helped shape
 House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's hard-line attitude toward Havana and fueled
 his fight against congressional attempts to relax economic sanctions against the
 island country.

 DeLay was a leader in the failed effort to pass a bill that would give Cuban
 castaway Elian Gonzalez U.S. citizenship, and he has been a major critic of the
 Justice Department raid that reunited the boy with his father last month.

 More recently, taking time out from his efforts to win support for permanent
 normal trade relations with China, DeLay has tried to stop another trade-related
 campaign, this one aimed at removing restrictions on the sale of food and
 medicine to Cuba.

 ``I don't support the Cuba trade language because you're not dealing with the
 Cuban people, you're dealing with [Fidel] Castro,'' DeLay told reporters last week.

 But DeLay is having trouble rallying GOP troops to his cause, in good part
 because many farm state Republicans are eager to find new markets for their
 farmers.

 Last Wednesday, DeLay summoned all House Republican members to a meeting
 to insist that all ``divisive'' amendments be stripped from appropriation bills. A
 main source of DeLay's displeasure was a provision in the House farm bill that
 would allow agricultural and medical sales, on a case-by-case basis, to Cuba and
 other nations under U.S. trade restrictions.

 Delay helped block similar legislation in the House last year.

 DELAY LOSES VOTE

 The House GOP members approved a resolution agreeing with DeLay, but made
 it nonbinding. Less than a week earlier, DeLay lost, on a 35-24 vote, an attempt in
 the House Appropriations Committee to strip the anti-sanctions language from the
 farm bill. Fifteen Republicans abandoned him in that vote.

 DeLay has a personal reason to fight against any opening toward Cuba. He told a
 tale of a frightening childhood experience in Cuba to an interviewer on NBC's Meet
 the Press and to farm lobbyists and others who have pleaded with him --
 unsuccessfully -- to change his mind on sanctions.

 Born in Laredo, Texas, 53 years ago, DeLay spent most of his childhood in
 Venezuela, where his father drilled oil wells. On a trip home from Venezuela, the
 airplane carrying a 12-year-old DeLay, his mother and his siblings touched down
 in Havana for a refueling stop during Castro's early days in power.

 ORDEAL IN CUBA

 ``They took my mother, my sister, my brother and myself out of the plane,
 marched us down the tarmac between the stinking soldiers with big guns and
 German shepherds, put us into a room for over three hours,'' DeLay told Tim
 Russert of Meet the Press last month. ``We had no idea what was happening to
 us. . . . I'll never forget it.''

 Debate on the House farm spending bill was initially scheduled for last Friday but
 was postponed to give DeLay and other Republican House leaders time to try to
 work out a compromise with Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., the main sponsor
 of the anti-sanctions legislation.

 Speaking about Nethercutt's legislation, John Feehery, spokesman for House
 Speaker Dennis Hastert, said the House leadership doesn't want new provisions
 in bills ``that would either split the [Republican] caucus or provoke a presidential
 veto.''

 Besides opening the door to agricultural sales to Cuba, Libya, Iraq, Iran and North
 Korea, Nethercutt's amendment, and a Senate provision sponsored by Sen. John
 Ashcroft, R-Mo., would strip the president of authority to include bans on the sale
 of food and medicine in future sanctions packages, a restriction the White House
 opposes.

 NO VETO THREAT

 The Clinton administration, however, has not threatened so far to veto the farm bill
 if it included the anti-sanctions language. While Feehery says the fractious House
 Republicans are ``trying to work things out'' over the anti-sanctions initiative, there
 is pressure to bring the farm bill to the floor for a vote this week.

 To end the impasse, an aide to Nethercutt said the GOP leaders have proposed
 several compromises, including allowing the Washington Republican to present
 his anti-sanctions initiative as a separate bill on the House floor or attach it to
 another bill.

 Nethercutt is considering his options, but his aide vowed that ``we're not going to
 let the issue go away.''

 Support for the anti-sanctions legislation is stronger in the Senate, especially
 after Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C. -- a longtime supporter of the embargo on Cuba --
 allowed the legislation to move forward in exchange for certain restrictions,
 including a ban on government loans and grants in agricultural sales to Cuba and
 other nations on the State Department's terrorist list.