By Serge F. Kovaleski
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 30, 1999; Page A8

HAVANA, March 29 – Officials here and in Washington uncharacteristically agreed on something today: Sunday's historic baseball game between the Baltimore Orioles and a team of Cuban all-stars amounted to something decidedly less than a foreign policy breakthrough.

The president of Cuba's National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcon, told reporters that the game demonstrated that people from both countries can enjoy harmonious relations and develop cultural ties when four decades of political hostilities are put aside.

Alarcon said the ballgame and a concert here Sunday night that featured 80 American and Cuban musicians, "reflect the possibility that can exist between two countries to have normal, fruitful, peaceful exchanges when they are based on mutual respect for each other's sovereignty and independence."

Sunday's game marked the first time that an American major league team had played a Cuban squad since shortly after President Fidel Castro seized power in 1959. The Cuban team is scheduled to travel to Baltimore in May to meet the Orioles for a second time.

Nevertheless, Alarcon – who is Castro's chief negotiator with Washington – expressed skepticism about how extensively ties between this nation and its powerful neighbor to the north could improve while the 37-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba remains in place.

"It is possible to have a normal relationship in one area while relations are abnormal in general," he said. "It can happen, but experience shows it is very difficult."

Alarcon said at a news conference here that Cuba is amenable to broadening so-called people-to-people exchanges with the United States – provided Havana does not feel they are an attempt by Washington to interfere in the domestic affairs of this communist island in the Caribbean.

Despite the enthusiasm and goodwill that surrounded Sunday's game at the packed 50,000-seat Estadio Latinoamericano, political relations between Cuba and the United States are at their most antagonistic level in years.

President Clinton's decision in January to forgo a bipartisan commission to review U.S.-Cuba policy and instead announce several measures intended to ease the embargo's impact infuriated the Cuban government, which has insisted the move was a ruse designed to undermine Castro's hold on power and stanch widespread criticism of the punitive policy.

Consequently, the Castro regime cracked down on Cubans considered to be U.S.-inspired political opponents, imposing prison sentences of up to five years on four leading dissidents and establishing tough new penalties for activities that can be construed as promoting U.S. policy objectives in Cuba.

Havana's actions have prompted condemnation not only from the United States, but from many countries that have opposed isolating Cuba and are some of its foremost economic partners, including Canada, Spain and Italy. The 15-member European Union recently criticized the sentencing of the four dissidents as a violation of human rights and urged the Castro government to releasethem promptly.

In Washington, State Department spokesman James Rubin said today that Sunday's game "highlighted the goodwill of the American people toward the Cuban people" and that, by being exposed not only to major leaguers but to a game involving visiting American Little Leaguers, "the Cuban people saw a fine example of American institutions, its values, diversity and openness."

But far from assessing the game's impact on U.S. policy, Rubin instead drew a laugh by telling reporters: "We are delighted about the way the game was played." The Orioles eked out a 3-2 win in 11 innings.

The United States consistently has said that scheduling the baseball game in Havana in no way reflected a change in policy toward the Castro government, particularly in light of recent developments, but rather was part of an effort by Washington to reach out to the Cuban people and promote a more open society here.

"The ballgame was not at all meant to be a reward for [the government's] behavior. There is no behavior to reward," a high-ranking U.S. State Department official said before the game was played. "It is about taking the people out of their isolation. Their isolation is not just political, it is cultural and social. Baseball is a little window out of that isolation."

The official added: "Our relationship with the Cuban government is largely dependent on its relationship with the Cuban people, and right now they are treating their people terribly."

The State Department has said that the games with the Orioles are not the equivalent of what came to be known as "Ping-Pong diplomacy," an initiative of the early 1970s that helped open relations between the United States and China.

Alarcon, too, said the Ping-Pong parallel was a false one. "They are different games with different rules," he quipped.

But referring to the normalization of relations that followed that exchange between the United States and China, Alarcon, departing from the harsh anti-American rhetoric he has used during the past several months, said: "I am sure something similar is going to happen with Cuba. . . . I don't know when.

He added: "We are not opposed to a normal relationship. . . . We are ready to wait whatever time is necessary. . . . But we will never accept relations that are not based on mutual respect."