Kennedy-Castro Encounter Touched by History

At the height of the cold war, Fidel Castro and John F. Kennedy were the bitterest of adversaries. So when the Cuban leader strode into a reception room at the Palace of the Revolution here early today to meet Robert and Michael Kennedy, two nephews of the American President, history hung heavily over the encounter.

The Bay of Pigs, the Cuban missile crisis -- Mr. Castro reflected on the major conflicts between the United States and Cuba that marked his first years in power, and on the Kennedy assassination. But pressed by his American visitors during a colloquy that lasted nearly three hours, he also responded to issues that still cloud relations with the United States, like human rights and Cuba's nuclear power program.

My family and my own life have been intertwined with Cuba," Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Mr. Castro at one point, recalling how as a child he was allowed by his father, the Attorney General and chief adviser to his brother the President, to come into meetings on the Cuban missile crisis. "Although there was much antagonism in the political relationship," he added, there was also respect for Mr. Castro's skills as a soldier and leader.

"It's unfortunate things happened as they did, and he could not do what he wanted to do," Mr. Castro said, referring to John F. Kennedy's assassination. "It is my impression that it was his intention after the missile crisis to change the framework" of relations between the United States and Cuba, which remains hostile even today.

The Kennedy brothers have been in Cuba since Wednesday as part of private visit by a delegation of 10 American energy experts and environmental safety advocates organized by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Citizens Energy Corporation.

The United States Government granted the groups the licenses that allowed them to travel legally to Cuba for the visit, which is to end on Monday.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 42, is senior staff attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is based in Washington, and lobbies in the United States and abroad on environmental and energy issues.

Michael L. Kennedy, 37, is chairman of Citizens Energy Corporation, a Boston-based nonprofit company that promotes the development of alternative energy resources and has been active in the third world.

Their meeting with the Cuban President began at 12:30 this morning because, Mr. Castro said, he had been watching a Cuban baseball playoff game on television late Saturday night and wanted to see how it ended. The team he was rooting for, Villa Clara, won 12-4, as it turned out, beating the Havana Industriales, and Mr. Castro entered in a chipper mood, wearing his customary green fatigues.

As is his custom in such discussions, the Cuban leader roamed over a wide variety of topics, offering assessments of luminaries ranging from Jacques Chirac and Mikhail S. Gorbachev to Babe Ruth and Louis Farrakhan. But he turned several times to his memories of the three years in which he squared off against John and Robert Kennedy during the cold war.

Mr. Castro did not refer to the American-sponsored assassination attempts against him that took place during the Kennedy Administration, nor did he offer his theory of who killed the President. But he talked at some length about the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961, which, he argued, was primarily a product of the Eisenhower Administration. The invasion attempt, carried out by Cuban exiles who were armed and trained by the United States, was a disaster, with most of the invaders killed or captured.

"I don't think they were left with many options in regard to Cuba," he said, referring to John and Robert Kennedy. "When they took office, all the plans were on. It would have been too difficult for them to change things. I think they inherited a legacy from the previous Administration."

Clearly in a ruminative state of mind, the Cuban leader reflected on how the fortunes of the Kennedy Administration were linked with his own. "President Kennedy enjoyed great prestige after the missile crisis," he said of the October 1962 showdown over Soviet missiles in Cuba in which both Mr. Castro and Nikita S. Khrushchev were forced to back down. "It was different than after the Bay of Pigs."

The day President Kennedy was killed, Mr. Castro recalled, he was meeting with a French journalist who had agreed to serve as an unofficial messenger between the men. "We were talking in Varadero at noontime," he said, referring to a beach resort on Cuba's northern coast. "What a coincidence that was. Just as we had started talking, the radio broadcast news of the President's assassination. That was very dramatic news, especially for me."

Michael Kennedy informed Mr. Castro that recently declassified United States Government documents now in the possession of the Kennedy Library in Boston indicate that President Kennedy was considering steps to improve relations with Cuba at the time he was killed.

"Have they all been declassified?" asked a clearly curious Mr. Castro, who was given copies of the documents at the end of the meeting.

Mr. Castro was also reminded that before he seized power in 1959, Robert and Michael Kennedy's maternal grandfather, George Skakel, owned a home in Varadero, where a neighbor was Fulgencio Batista, the dictator Mr. Castro would overthrow.

"Did we nationalize it, by any chance?" Mr. Castro asked, laughing at the thought. He then mocked legislation currently before Congress, sponsored by Senator Jesse Helms, the North Carolina Republican, and Representative Dan Burton, a Republican of Indiana, that would impose sanctions on foreign investors who acquire properties in Cuba originally owned by Americans.

"You don't need Helms-Burton to be able to go there," to the family's winter home, he told the Kennedys and their cousin Michael C. Skakel. "We can make an arrangement."

Appealing to their host's sense of history, and his place in it, the Kennedys urged Mr. Castro to free several political prisoners. The Cuban leader did not seem surprised by the request, but neither did he offer much encouragement when he was handed two lists of names.

"You too?" he said, referring to previous meetings with members of the Kennedy family and foreign delegations that have also asked him to release political prisoners. "You can show me the list so that you will be forgiven in the United States."

After examining the lists and asserting that "these were surely given to you by the State Department," Mr. Castro suggested that if the United States lifted its 34-year economic embargo against Cuba he might be inclined to be more yielding.

"When the blockade is lifted and there are no longer hostilities, this category of prisoner will not exist anymore," he said. "It's in your hands. It's up to you."

Mr. Castro's remarks followed a roundup in recent days of Cuban dissidents. At least 10 people, all of them members of a coalition of opposition, human rights and professional groups called Concilio Cubano, have been arrested in the crackdown, and another is still being sought, according to colleagues of those detained.

The coalition has been trying to organize a conference here next weekend and has asked for Government authorization to meet, citing provisions of the Cuban Constitution.

The bulk of the meeting was devoted to discussion of Cuba's energy needs and its recently renewed nuclear power program. The Kennedys and the others in the delegation strongly urged Mr. Castro to abandon the nuclear program, arguing that alternative energy sources would be far safer, cleaner, cheaper and more efficient.

The future of the nuclear power plant is "a very complex question," Mr. Castro responded. But he indicated some flexibility on the issue and poked fun at his former Soviet allies and their technology, saying he looked forward to the day nuclear reactors would become "20th-century pyramids, like those in Egypt," and describing the Soviet Union's nuclear power program after the Chernobyl disaster as "just an excuse to ask for more money."

As Mr. Castro was speaking, a Russian delegation led by Minister of Nuclear Energy Viktor Mikhailov was arriving here to discuss plans to finish a nuclear reactor on Cuba's southern coast. If anyone else has a better idea, the Cuban leader indicated in what was clearly a reference to the United States and other Western nations, he would be happy to hear it.

"That chapter is not closed yet," he said. "We are open to options."