WASHINGTON -- A Cuban diplomat linked to Puerto Rican terrorists will receive a U.S. visa to work in Washington once Cuba agrees to let in two State Department officials assigned to Havana, U.S. officials say.

The FBI initially filed a formal veto to Fernando Garcia Bielsa's assignment to the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, but later reviewed its decision and withdrew the objection, the officials added.

Sen. Jesse Helms, R-NC, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has called Garcia Bielsa ''a notorious Cuban intelligence operative'' and hinted at Clinton administration pressures on the FBI to reverse itself.

The State Department ''now has no legitimate reason to deny [Garcia Bielsa] a visa, but they're waiting for reciprocity for the people waiting to go to Havana,'' said one congressional source knowledgeable about the controversy.

The State Department and the Cuban Foreign Ministry maintain there's no official link between the Garcia Bielsa case and the delays on Cuban visas requested by two State Department officials assigned to Havana.

REPORTED MEETINGS

U.S. officials said the FBI has intelligence reports showing Garcia Bielsa met often in Cuba in the 1970s with two radical Puerto Rican pro-independence groups, the Macheteros and Armed Forces of National Liberation, known as FALN.

A wave of FALN and Machetero terror bombings around the United States in the early 1970s killed six people and wounded more than 60. Police suspect the Macheteros of four bombings that injured one person in Puerto Rico last year.

Garcia Bielsa was a top official of the Americas Department of the Cuban Communist Party in the 1970s, then tasked by President Fidel Castro with training and arming leftist guerrilla groups around Latin America.

The FBI based its objection of Garcia Bielsa on his 1970s meetings with the Puerto Rican radicals. Under U.S. procedures the veto would have forced the State Department to deny him a visa.

Queried by the State Department, the FBI later reviewed its evidence and procedures and decided that meetings alone were not enough to deny the Cuban a visa, congressional officials said.

FBI spokesmen declined to explain either decision. The Cuban Interests Section in Washington said only that Garcia Bielsa is still awaiting a State Department reply to his visa request.

LETTER TO ALBRIGHT

Helms, in an angry letter to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright Sept. 21, hinted that Garcia Bielsa had done far more than meet with the Puerto Rican radicals but offered no details.

A conservative Washington magazine, Insight, three days later quoted a U.S. intelligence official as saying that Garcia Bielsa ''personally oversaw the funding and direction of the Macheteros.

Cuba has long been on the State Department's list of nations linked to international terrorism, along with others such as Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, Syria and North Korea.

The 1998 list notes that while there was ''no evidence'' Cuba sponsored any attacks in the previous year, ''it continues to provide sanctuary to terrorists from several different . . . organizations.''