One is that Albright will somehow try to move the issue off its current deadlock between U.S. sanctions that don't appear to be working and headstrong Cuban refusal to undertake political reforms.

A victim of the Nazi and later communist takeover of her native Czechoslovakia, Albright sees President Fidel Castro as a totalitarian dictator but also believes Washington has made mistakes, this side argues.

Cuba is on her Top 10 list of concerns, and she will at some time in the next 3 1/2 years of the Clinton administration try to accomplish some movement without giving Castro any unearned victories.

Nonsense, says the other side.

Albright, despite her love affair with Cuban exiles born of her gutsy condemnations of Havana for shooting down two Brothers to the Rescue airplanes, is too careful to risk her reputation on Cuba.

There is no critical mass in Washington for doing anything about Cuba, either tightening or loosening the U.S. sanctions, this side argues, and no sign Havana is in any mood to reciprocate any U.S. opening.

Too many risks for too little gain, and Albright is too savvy to overlook those red flags and launch any kind of Cuban initiative.

My bet? Albright is too dynamic to pass up the chance to undo one of the oldest Gordian knots in U.S. foreign policy.

CUBA IN HAVANA. Cuba's Communist Party members are off and running on a long series of meetings to discuss the platform for their national congress this autumn, and there's early word of complaints.

The every-five-year congress, set for Oct. 8-10, is the party's most important gathering, the time when Communists plan the future and can update membership in the elite Central Committee and Political Bureau.

With 1.2 million members in the party and the Communist Youth Union, the Communists are holding some 350,000 meetings around the island before the congress to discuss a platform drafted within the Central Committee.

Traditionally, such meetings have merely rubber-stamped the platform. But party members in Havana report that a surprising number of cadres, particularly the younger members, are openly criticizing the platform.

Members have complained that the document says little about the economic problems that Cubans face every day and offers even less in the way of solutions, party activists in Havana say.

``People are saying they don't see the government admitting anything wrong or taking any real steps to get us out of our crisis, that they are at the end of their ropes, depressed,'' one party member said.

No one is calling for significant changes in the government, and most agree they need to work together to improve rather than undermine the one-party system that has ruled Cuba for more than three decades, members said.

But the complaints have forced top party officials to sit up and take notice, and Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, one of the party's top administrators, has been forced to call on members to calm their tempers.

New party documents will be made public in the run-up to the Congress, Machado Ventura has assured members, and the platform now being circulated is just a draft and can be amended.

My bet? The Congress will see more young people named to the Central Committee, but policies will remain about the same unless an economic downturn forces the government to adopt more market-style reforms.

Copyright © 1997 The Miami Herald