By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer

The Bush administration is examining ways to tighten its tough policy toward Cuba in the wake of the communist government's recent crackdown on political dissent
and the criticism it has brought from many who have long advocated normalizing relations with the island, according to administration officials.

The arrests this month of 75 independent journalists and activists in Cuba's small community of political dissidents appear, for the moment at least, to have taken the
wind out of the bipartisan congressional majority that favors lifting the ban on travel to the island and easing the U.S. trade embargo. President Bush had threatened
to veto any such measures passed by Congress.

"I think the scales have fallen from a lot of eyes," a U.S. official said.

Yesterday, the executive director and the board of directors of the Cuba Policy Foundation, the leading U.S. nongovernmental organization calling for expanded
trade and contacts with Cuba, resigned in protest at what they called "the regime's sudden, wholesale repression of human rights." The group of Latin American
policy experts and former U.S. diplomats said it still believes engaging Cuba would further U.S. and Cuban interests. But Cuban President Fidel Castro's
government, they said in a statement, "could not have failed to know that its actions would have a chilling effect" on efforts to ease sanctions.

"Indeed, the arrests of dissidents who had just days before met with members of the U.S. Congress can only be interpreted as intended to slow the initiative and to
embarrass those who were behind it," the statement said. "We can only conclude . . . Cuba does not share our enthusiasm for a more open relationship."

Several European governments are reconsidering diplomatic ties and economic aid programs to Havana. The European Union has warned Castro that Cuba's
application for aid under an EU program for former colonies is in jeopardy. The Organization of American States, which suspended Cuba's membership in 1962,
yesterday held its first formal discussion of human rights in Cuba in more than two decades. Members could not agree on a resolution condemning the arrests.

Although there is a wide range of administration proposals for tightening sanctions on Havana, U.S. officials said each potential measure carries a domestic political
price and risks undercutting the promotion of the dissident community that is the core of administration policy.

One of the most draconian proposals, officials said, would be suspending a bilateral migration agreement negotiated in 1994-95, after the last mass outpouring of
"rafters" -- Cubans trying to cross the 90 miles of water between the island and the United States. Closing down the orderly departure process that grants as many
as 20,000 U.S. visas to Cubans each year might precipitate another migration crisis, officials said.

The Cuban government warned last week that U.S. pressure could "stimulate illegal migration, which in no way could be blamed on Cuba." In a news conference
Friday, Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said his government was trying to avoid "the unleashing of a migratory crisis which would conclude in a war between
both countries."

Cuba was responding to news reports indicating the administration was considering a suspension of charter flights between the two countries, and cutting or ending
an estimated $1 billion a year that Cuban Americans send to family members on the island.

U.S. officials said that the administration is developing a policy response to Cuba's action against the dissidents -- who were sentenced to prison terms ranging to 28
years -- and that no specific proposal is under consideration. "The argument for doing it," an official said of stopping the estimated $1 billion a year in remittances, "is
that what we should be about is denying resources to the regime, because this money, sooner or later, it ends up in the hands of the regime."

"On the other hand," the official said, the money is supporting "the mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters" in Cuba of a number of U.S. citizens.

With no scheduled U.S. air service to Cuba, charter flights from selected U.S. cities carry thousands of Cuban Americans to the island weekly for "humanitarian"
family visits.

The effect such measures would have on the Cuban people has divided the politically powerful Cuban American community. Although many have pushed for a
crackdown, others have argued for a different policy, especially after the successful U.S. military action in Iraq. "We would like to see the administration . . . call for
regime change" in Cuba, said Dennis K. Hays, executive vice president of the Cuban American National Foundation.

"We're not advocating sending in the 101st Airborne, or guys practicing in the Everglades" for an exile invasion, Hays said. Instead, he called for increasing the
funding and effectiveness of U.S. propaganda and news broadcasts to the island, and increasing aid to dissidents.

Bush promised both of those measures in a speech May 20, the anniversary of Cuban independence from Spain. Proponents of a tougher U.S. policy have criticized
the administration for a lack of follow-through, particularly for continuing a Clinton-era ban on U.S. cash payments to dissident groups. Instead, the policy has
focused on further limiting the number of non-Cuban Americans who can travel to the island, and on the distribution of books and other reading material and
provision of Internet access through the U.S. diplomatic mission in Cuba.

But those programs -- in addition to stepped-up efforts by James C. Cason, the chief U.S. diplomat in Cuba, to meet with political activists -- have been enough for
Havana to try to justify its crackdown on grounds that the United States is promoting illegal subversive activity and to claim that the dissident movement is
U.S.-created.

"The United States is trying to create conditions for a crisis in our relations," Dagoberto Rodriguez, head of the Cuban Interests Section, said at a Washington news
conference yesterday. In addition to assisting the dissidents, Rodriguez said, U.S. failure to condemn several air and sea hijackings in recent weeks would encourage
such acts. Cuban officials have suggested that the recent execution of three men who tried to hijack a ferryboat was an action the government was forced to take to
discourage illegal migration.

Rodriguez offered another example of the U.S. intention to create a migration crisis, saying that the administration has approved only 700 visas this year out of the
20,000 authorized under the bilateral agreement. A U.S. official acknowledged that visa issuance had fallen behind, but declined to provide specific numbers.

The cause, the official said, was a new law requiring increased scrutiny of all immigrant applicants from countries, such as Cuba, that the United States has
designated sponsors of terrorism.

                                               © 2003