The Americans, at a meeting two weeks ago in Havana, also told a Cuban Foreign Ministry official that Clinton's recent positive comments on President Fidel Castro meant that ``now would be the time to respond in a positive way,'' said U.S. officials and Cuban-American sources in Washington.
Top U.S. officials confirmed that the meeting took place but insisted the Americans merely repeated the U.S. policy of promising improved relations if Cuba adopts significant economic and political changes.
``They carried no special message. No special message was intended,'' said one official involved in Cuba policy. ``They used the exact, public formulation of our policy: If you are prepared to take substantial, fundamental steps . . . we are prepared to make positive responses.''
But Cuban Americans and others who oppose any warming of U.S.-Cuba ties complained that the Americans appeared to have effectively made a peace overture to Havana by offering a change in policy.
``It sure seems they might be trying to sneak through a change,'' said one Cuban-American source who saw the diplomatic cable filed by the U.S. Interests Section in Havana to report on the meeting.
At the meeting were Michael Kozak, head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana; and the CIA deputy national intelligence officer for Latin America, a career agency man who until recently was assigned to Cuban issues at the National Security Council in the White House. The Herald agreed not to print his name.
When U.S. officials set up Havana appointments for the CIA man, they identified him to the Cubans only as an analyst on a routine get-acquainted visit, ``but of course the Cubans knew who he was,'' a Washington source said.
The Americans met with Carlos Fernandez de Cosio, head of the Foreign Ministry's North American Department.
``His response was negative, that nothing could be done until the United States, and these were his words, halts the `economic aggression' against Cuba,'' said one Cuban-American source.
U.S. officials said the Americans' comments were unusual only in that such broad statements of policy are usually made in public or to very high Cuban officials, rather than to working-level officials.
``At such levels we usually deal with specific issues,'' one official said. ``Such a broad statement is less than usual, but totally within the limits of what the policy has been for years.''
Visits by CIA analysts to Cuba are definitely less common, the official added.
But senior White House officials said they were not even aware that the CIA analyst was going to Havana. And he certainly was not delivering any message from the Clinton administration, they stressed.
Washington has been rife with talk of a possible shift in policy toward Havana since Clinton made two unusually positive statements on Cuba and Castro that seemed to widen the door for improved relations.
While visiting Argentina in October, he said that ``if there could be some signal that they want to open up and change direction, then I think even the hardest-line people in the Congress, even the hardest-line people in Miami, who are basically responsible for the policy, would be open to a different approach.''
Clinton added that he supported the Cuban Democracy Act, ``that basically said . . . the U.S. will attempt to work out an accommodation with Cuba in which, as they become more open, we will take more . . . steps to reach out to them.''
Three weeks later, Clinton told NBC's Meet The Press that there could be an ``opening'' toward Havana, if only Washington could get a signal from Castro.
``He's a highly intelligent man,'' Clinton said. ``But we have to have some basis for opening. It can't be a one-way street. There has to be some sense that there's an evolution going on in Cuba.''
Talk of a shift in policy picked up speed after the death of Jorge Mas Canosa, chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation, appeared to leave the Cuban-American lobby weakened and leaderless.
And now the report of the Kozak-CIA meeting with the Cubans has unleashed ``a huge amount of speculation'' based on a routine session at which longstanding policy was reaffirmed, one Washington official said.
``People are putting two and two together and coming up with six,'' the official added.
At the heart of the controversy is the inside-the-beltway debate over U.S. policy on Cuba.
Castro critics insist the policy must be governed by the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, which froze the U.S. embargo in place and appears to require Castro and his brother Raul to leave power before the U.S. government can establish any relations with Havana.
Yet Clinton's comments in Argentina and on Meet The Press appear to hark back to the pre-Helms Burton policy of ``carefully calibrated steps'' -- measured U.S. rewards for significant Cuban improvements.
``On two separate occasions . . . President Clinton repudiated the [Helms-Burton Act] . . . that he signed into law on March 12, 1996, and retreated to his policy of constructive engagement,'' complained the Nov. 30 issue of U.S.-Cuba Policy Report, a Washington journal that tracks the issue.
Herald staff writer Christopher Marquis contributed to this report.
Copyright © 1997 The Miami Herald