Tuesday, March 2, 1999; Page A16

VLADIMIRO ROCA, Martha Beatriz Roque, Felix Bonne, Rene Gomez: Note those names. They are dissidents in Communist-ruled Cuba who went on trial in Havana yesterday. These brave people were jailed a year and a half ago for holding news conferences for foreign journalists and diplomats, urging voters to boycott Cuba's one-party elections, warning foreigners that their investments would contribute to Cuban suffering and criticizing President Fidel Castro's grip on power. For these "offenses" the four face prison sentences of five or six years.

Castro Cuba has typically Communist notions of justice. By official doctrine, there are no political prisoners, only common criminals. President Castro rejects the designation of the four, in the international appeals for their freedom, as "prisoners of conscience." Their trial is closed to the foreign press. Some of their colleagues were reportedly arrested to keep them from demonstrating during the trial.

Fidel Castro is now making an energetic effort to recruit foreign businessmen to help him compensate for the trade and investment lost by the continuing American embargo and by withdrawal of the old Soviet subsidies. He is scoring some successes: British Airways, for instance, says it is opening a Havana service. Many of the countries engaged in these contacts with Cuba do so on the basis that by their policy of "constructive engagement" they are opening up the regime more effectively to democratic and free-market currents than is the United States by its harder-line policy.

The trial of the four provides a good test of this proposition. The four are in the vanguard of Cuba's small nonviolent political opposition. Acquittal would indicate that in this case anyway the authorities are listening to the international appeals for greater political freedom. But if the four are convicted and sentenced, it will show that the regime won't permit any opposition at all. What then will the international crowd have to say about the society-transforming power of their investments?