``From the standpoint of diplomatic visits . . . this is turning out to be a banner year for Cuba,'' said John Kavulich of the New York-based U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, which counted about 50 such visits since Jan. 1.

Experts say Havana appears to be on its best international footing since 1979, when it headed the Movement of Non-Aligned Nations while remaining fully active in the Soviet bloc.

Washington's attempts to isolate President Fidel Castro's government have been slowly losing ground since the Cold War ended in 1989, dissipating fears of Havana as an international threat.

``There's long been a hidden transcript, internationally speaking, on the need to engage Cuba,'' said Damian Fernandez, chairman of the international relations department at Florida International University.

But the issue blossomed after John Paul, on the first day of his Jan. 21-25 visit to the West's last Communist-ruled nation, issued his call: ``Let Cuba open itself to the world, and let the world open itself to Cuba.''

``He made it morally acceptable for countries to engage in Cuba,'' Fernandez said. ``That explains the timing of this explosion of international efforts to contact Cuba.''

Chretien's trip to Cuba next week is the strongest sign yet of the erosion in U.S. efforts to isolate Havana. Yet the hopes and failures generated by his policy of engagement with Havana, adopted after his party's electoral victory in 1993, also underline the problems that other nations may face in dealing with Cuba.

Active exchanges

After 17 years of official Ottawa coolness sparked by Cuban military incursions in Africa, the Chretien policies have helped turn Canada into Cuba's third-biggest trade partner, behind Russia and Mexico.

Canadians top the list of tourists in Cuba, and Toronto-based Sherritt International is the largest foreign investor on the island, with hundreds of millions of dollars sunk into mining, tourism and even farming.

In part, Chretien's new policy was forged to give Canadian investors a chance to beat their American neighbors, blocked from doing business in Cuba by the 36-year-old U.S. embargo.

``Canada wants to establish as many commercial ties with Cuba as possible before the window of opportunity offered by the embargo closes,'' Canadian historian Gillian McGillivay wrote in a December report for Georgetown University's Cuba Briefing Paper Series.

But Chretien now faces the hard task of expanding nonbusiness ties, mostly through Canadian programs that expose Cuban officials to Western views on human rights, taxes, judicial and economic systems.

``We have the chassis of a policy and now need the body,'' said Julia Sagebien, who lectures on Canadian-Latin American trade at Halifax's Dalhousie University and writes often on Cuban issues.

Running into turbulence

Chretien's Cuba policy has lately run into turbulence:

Canadian-trained Cuban tax officials are shrinking the island's already tiny private sector, countering a trend toward economic liberalization. And Canadian influence has produced mixed results in other areas. One day after Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy announced a bilateral pact in Havana that included cooperation on human rights issues, Havana jailed three top dissidents.

While Canada has trained many Cuban officials on market economics, Havana has refused to embrace significant economic reforms since 1995.

``We spent time and money trying to create the fish tank where a mixed economy can occur,'' Sagebien said. ``Unfortunately, the fish are not biting.''

Those setbacks have raised concerns about the effectiveness of Chretien's policies, and Canadian media carried several stories last year under headlines such as Down with Canada's Fidelistas.

``Canada's long enthusiasm for Cuba's Communist dictatorship is so deeply ingrained, so wrapped in sentimental socialist swooning and blind gullibility, that Ottawa is now about to embark on a wrongheaded attempt to . . . prop up Fidel Castro,'' business columnist Terence Corcoran wrote in The Toronto Globe and Mail soon after Axworthy visited Havana in January 1997.

Salt in the wound

U.S. officials rubbed a little salt into that wound when Chretien confirmed that he would visit Cuba on Monday and Tuesday.

``We have not seen any evidence that constructive engagement with Cuba has produced results with regard to improving respect for human rights or promoting democracy,'' State Department spokesman James Rubin said.

Chretien defenders say his policy may offer hope in the long run by showing those Cubans who might succeed Castro in leadership positions the many non-Marxist visions of government.

``When there is a transition, the Cuban leaders will have been exposed to different paradigms for justice, parliament, banking, economic reforms and human rights,'' Sagebien said.

But Chretien appears to be just beginning to learn that simple slogans such as ``constructive dialogue'' might not be adequate for a problem as complex and stubborn as Cuba.

``There's a sense of beginning to understand the profundity of the Cuban problem,'' Sagebien said. ``Canadians are just now becoming more savvy about the internal, darker side of the Cuban reality.''