Mas, Spain's leader planned Cuban transition, book says

Published Tuesday, January 27, 1998, in the Miami Herald

Mas, Spain's leader planned Cuban transition, book says

MADRID -- (EFE) -- A plan to democratize Cuba was put together in 1992 by Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez and Miami exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa, a Peruvian journalist reports.

In a new book, The Indomitable Exile, Alvaro Vargas Llosa tells of a meeting between Gonzalez and Mas in Madrid's Moncloa Palace, in which they drafted a transition plan that included granting exile in Spain to Cuban President Fidel Castro and his brother Raul, Cuba's defense minister.

The book is being released today in Madrid. No longer prime minister, Gonzalez remains a Socialist deputy in the Spanish Congress. Mas, chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation, died Nov. 23 in Miami.

Vargas Llosa, a former editorial page editor at El Nuevo Herald, had access to foundation files to write his book.

The plan ``opened the door to Fidel Castro to go into exile with his millions and live in peace, a peace guaranteed both by Washington and the Cuban exile community,'' the book says. Castro rejected the proposal.

The plan's key provisions, according to Vargas Llosa:

The Castro brothers were to relinquish power and leave for Spain.

Free elections, supervised by international agencies, were to be held under an emergency government.

National reconciliation would be accomplished without vendettas or exclusions.

Democracy and a market economy would be established.

On the question of how to deal with the claims for confiscated property Havana could expect from exiles, Mas reportedly agreed that ``we would have to find some formula for reasonable compensation, but in no case should [Havana] return the properties, because that would lead to huge conflict and muddy the transition.''

Efforts to persuade Castro to agree to a peaceful transition to democracy went back to the first Ibero-American summit meeting in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1991, the book says.

Reportedly, Gonzalez described to Mas the pressure exerted on Castro by Latin American leaders and Gonzalez himself during that meeting. Then their plan took shape.