Congressional Group Wants Cuba Dialogue

HAVANA, Dec. 18, 2006 — -- Ten members of Congress huddled for a strategy meeting at the National Hotel on Saturday evening and were not happy, according to some of those present.

Most of the six Democrats and four Republicans had visited Cuba many times over the last decade, opposed the U.S embargo and had repeatedly dined and chatted with President Fidel Castro.

Now that Castro was out of the picture, they had expected his younger brother and acting president, Raúl Castro, to do the same with them.

Raúl Castro, in a major speech earlier this month, said Cuba is willing "to settle the long U.S.-Cuba disagreement at the negotiating table," provided Washington accepted Cuba's sovereignty and such principles as nonintervention.

But the meeting they had hoped for with Raúl Castro had not happened, and it was now clear it would not before the lawmakers headed back to Washington Sunday.

The delegation had dined Friday evening with National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon, the point man for U.S. relations, and met with Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque and other officials Saturday.

They had heard it all before. Cuba was ready to talk but not to change. The United States was engaged in an all-out assault on the island nation, not the other way around, and should give ground first.

"I've traveled all over the world, and this is the first time I've been lectured to," one lawmaker quipped.

But most important, the members of Congress had been told that their belief that Fidel Castro was dying of cancer was as false as Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. Fidel Castro did not have a terminal illness and would take on some role in the future, said each and every one of the Cuban officials they met.

"The party line is that Fidel is coming back," Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., said at a Havana press conference on Sunday.

So why no chat with Raúl Castro, the U.S. lawmakers asked one another in the sixth-floor meeting room at the hotel, and what did that mean for their mission?