BUENOS AIRES, Oct 2 (Reuter) - Argentina has told a senior aide to U.S. President Bill Clinton it might consider boycotting the Ibero-American summit in Havana in 1999 unless Fidel Castro made more democratic progress in Cuba.
Argentina's Peronist President Carlos Menem is one of Latin America's fiercest critics of Castro's communist regime and periodically denounces Castro as a ``tyrant.''
Argentine officials said on Thursday the government had taken advantage of a visit by Clinton's special envoy to the Americas, Thomas McLarty, on Wednesday to tell him of its position on the 1999 summit in Havana.
``We are thinking of the maximum alternative, which is not going,'' Foreign Minister Guido Di Tella told reporters. But in a sign Argentina's mind is not made up, he said: ``But we also consider as an interesting alternative the idea that holding the summit could mean a breath of fresh air in the island.''
An Argentine boycott would be the first such protest to mar the Ibero-American summits since they were started in 1991. They bring together all heads of state and government of Latin America and former colonial powers Spain and Portugal and are the only regional gatherings to include Cuba.
The communist-ruled island is excluded from the Organization of American States and the Rio Group of Latin American nations, which allege that Cuba's record on human rights and democratic freedoms means it does not qualify for membership.
The last Ibero-American summit in Santiago, Chile, in 1996, which was attended by Castro, issued a document committing the region to multi-party democracy. Di Tella said Castro signed up, but ``met none of those commitments in the past year.''
One goverment official said Di Tella told McLarty it was ``unlikely Ibero-American nations will accept the invitation to Cuba in 1999'' without seeing signs, however modest, of some democratic progress in Cuba by the 1997 summit in Venezuela or the 1998 meeting in Lisbon.
Despite his criticisms of Castro, Menem echoes other Latin American nations by opposing the U.S. Helms-Burton Act which aims to toughen trade sanctions against Cuba by punishing some foreign firms doing business in Cuba.
McLarty's visit was in preparation for Clinton's tour of Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina later this month.
19:38 10-02-97