Posted on 06/08/2002 2:28:58 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Huddleston now has Washington's blessing to freely speak with journalists, something she could not do under President Clinton. She has traveled repeatedly to Miami for interviews, telling reporters she believes a transition began in Cuba a year ago when Castro fainted briefly during a speech in the searing sun.
HAVANA (AP) - U.S. diplomat Vicki J. Huddleston was in Cuba almost three years before she shook Fidel Castro's hand for the first time.
Until the airport greeting ceremony for former President Jimmy Carter in May, Huddleston had never been in a situation calling for her and Castro to be that close.
"He just look relieved I didn't give him a little radio!" Huddleston quipped of the encounter, referring to hundreds of radios she and other U.S. diplomats have distributed despite protests by Castro's government.
Since arriving in September 1999, Huddleston has overseen one of America's most politically sensitive missions. The United States severed full diplomatic relations with the communist country four decades ago.
Under diplomatic protocols established years ago, Cuba's president and Washington's representative are rarely invited to the same events. They almost never stand face to face - as they did when Carter arrived.
Huddleston, nominated as ambassador to Mali when her Cuban tour ends in September, has walked a rocky road that turned sharply to the right when President Bush took office in 2001.
While her job doesn't live up to the cloak-and-dagger antics of "Our Man in Havana," Graham Greene's satiric novel, it has required diplomatic finesse.
Only two months after Huddleston arrived, 5-year-old Elian Gonzalez was found bobbing in an inner tube off Florida. During the seven-month custody battle between Elian's father in Cuba and his Miami relatives, Huddleston served as liaison between Washington and Havana, meeting frequently with Cuban officials.
"The main thing is the child," Huddleston said in December 1999. "I have two children, and as a mother you want to see the best for the child."
Huddleston often stood on the balcony of the seven-story sea front former U.S. Embassy, peering through binoculars at the hundreds of thousands of people called out by Castro to protest attempts by Elian's relatives to keep him in Miami. Elian returned to Cuba in June 2000.
During the Clinton administration, Huddleston kept a relatively low profile, meeting quietly with dissidents and traveling to provincial areas to ensure unsuccessful migrants weren't harassed after being returned home by the U.S. Coast Guard.
Huddleston has had a higher profile under Bush, who recently reiterated that American trade and travel restrictions on Cuba will not be eased until competitive elections are held.
She insists her recent tough talk on human rights and democracy is more the result of her increased familiarity with Cuba than the change in presidents.
"I don't think the Cuban government, like the rest of us, can resist the passage of time," Huddleston said last month during an interview in her home, built before Castro's 1959 revolution as the American ambassador's residence.
Huddleston now has Washington's blessing to freely speak with journalists, something she could not do under President Clinton. She has traveled repeatedly to Miami for interviews, telling reporters she believes a transition began in Cuba a year ago when Castro fainted briefly during a speech in the searing sun.
That reminder of the 75-year-old leader's mortality, along with a homegrown referendum campaign, prompted Cubans to think more about the nation's future, Huddleston said.
"The Cuban people want a generational change, they want a name change," she said, an apparent reference to Castro's choice of his 71-year-old brother as his successor. "Cuban people are thinking about transition."
Huddleston was familiar with Cuba before she arrived. She helped run the State Department's Office of Cuban Affairs from 1989-1993, when the former Soviet Union collapsed and sent Cuba into an economic and ideological tailspin.
And she came to Cuba as a diplomat who has served in countries undergoing tumultuous changes. While working the No. 2 job at the U.S. Embassy in Haiti, Huddleston saw a multinational military force deployed, a military strongman resign, and President Jean-Bertrand Aristide return to power.
In Cuba, Huddleston is best known as the woman responsible for the radios, which were first given to guests - including many dissidents - during last year's Fourth of July party at the white two-story house she shares with husband, Robert, a retired foreign service officer.
Since then, Huddleston and other U.S. diplomats have distributed hundreds of the radios.
Wearing the comfortable but smart linen pantsuits and sandals she favors, Huddleston enjoys handing them out during trips to the countryside, chatting in her well-practiced Spanish with Cubans she meets along the way.
Cuban authorities say the radios were provided to encourage Cubans to listen to Radio Marti, a U.S. government station that Havana has jammed in the past. Huddleston says the radios can be used to listen to any station.
"I think the government opposes them," she said, "because they represent freedom of choice."
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On the Net:
State Department's Cuba site: http://www.state.gov/www/regions/wha/cuba/index.html
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