MIAMI -- In an initiative that has unsettled hardliners both here and in Havana, a senior Cuban government official and the leader of the most powerful anti-Castro Cuban exile group in the United States faced off in a rare direct encounter as part of an unusual debate broadcast on Thursday night.
Deviating from the orthodoxy that prevails on both sides of the Strait of Florida, Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly, and Jorge Mas Canosa, chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation, discussed for more than an hour issues like human rights and the American economic embargo.
Their views contrasted sharply, as expected, but that was overshadowed by the political significance of their willingness even to speak to one another.
Mas Canosa's exile group lobbied successfully this year for passage of the Helms-Burton Act extending the embargo, and is regarded by friend and foe alike as a principal architect of American policy toward Cuba. For its part, the Cuban government has in the past limited its contacts with exile groups to those consistently critical of American policy.
The debate was taped on Aug. 23 and broadcast by CBS TeleNoticias. The all-news, Spanish-language cable network has its headquarters here and arranged for Alarcon to speak from a studio in Havana. The encounter, which diplomats said could have occurred only with the personal approval of President Fidel Castro, was transmitted to more than 20 Latin American countries and broadcast in Miami, but was not televised in Cuba.
At first, Alarcon, who is generally regarded as Cuba's third most powerful official, seemed uncharacteristically restrained in his role as spokesman for Castro and the Cuban Revolution. When asked how history will judge Castro, he replied: "Well, obviously one will have to wait."
Mas Canosa, on the other hand, took an aggressive tone at the start, saying that Castro's life "is one huge lie" and that the Cuban government had spread "thousands of slanders and insults" about his group "and about me personally."
But the evening ended with Mas Canosa, a multimillionaire with interests in construction and telecommunications, saying he can envision circumstances in which he would be willing to work with Alarcon.
"If Fidel Castro leaves the Cuban political scene and Ricardo Alarcon becomes the man heading a democratic transition, would you give him all your economic support?" asked one of the panelists moderating the debate.
"If he wins in a free democratic election," Mas Canosa replied, "we would support him, yes sir."
The Cuban government maintains that the exchange between these bitterest of enemies is not the start of some larger political process.
"Cuba has not had a dialogue, and will not have a dialogue, with hysterics, mafia types, and annexationists," Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina said in Havana last week.
Nevertheless, Cuba has been unable to explain why a senior official has broken with a longstanding policy of avoiding all contact with hardline Cuban exile groups that Havana routinely describes as "that mafia in Miami." Mas Canosa in particular has been the target of some of the harshest language, derided as a gangster, mercenary, and CIA puppet of the CIA.
"It means nothing," Marianela Ferriol, a spokesman for the Cuban Foreign Ministry, said at the ministry's weekly news briefing in Havana in response to questions from reporters. "There is no dialogue, there is no debate, there is no recognition."
Reached by telephone on Thursday, a secretary at Alarcon's office in Havana said he was traveling outside the capital and therefore unavailable to explain his reasons for agreeing to the debate. His deputy, Andres Montes, did not respond to messages requesting comment.
Diplomats in Havana attributed the Foreign Ministry's evident unease with the debate to personal and ideological rivalries within the Cuban government. Alarcon is a former foreign minister and is still Cuba's chief negotiator with the United States on immigration and other issues, which has given him a voice in Cuban foreign policy that often equals Robaina's.
In remarks to the official Cuban news press agency Prensa Latina last week, Robaina criticized Alarcon's action without naming him. Appearances with enemies of the revolution "try to introduce confusion over the traditional positions of Cuba, which have not changed," Robaina complained said.
The debate also marked a shift of attitude on the part of the Cuban American National Foundation, which in the past has criticized rival Cuban exile groups here that favor dialogue with the Cuban government as part of a transition to the post-Castro era. Indeed, some exiles have in recent days accused Mas Canosa of abandoning the principles of a 37-year-old struggle.
"We could not pass up an opportunity to express our point of view to a high-ranking representative of the Cuban government," Mas Canosa said in an interview with a Spanish-language radio station here when asked why he agreed to take participate. "Reason and truth were on our side, the side of the victims."
Copyright 1996 The New York Times Company