The Broad View

Though he denied it, Cuba's ambitious young (41) Ambassador to the U.S., Guillermo Belt, looked more & more as if he were going to be a candidate to succeed President Ramon Grau San Martin next year.

He flew to Havana, was closeted three and four times daily with his good friend Grau. While Prime Minister Carlos Prio Socarras, an avowed candidate, cooled his heels outside the President's second-floor office. Belt used a private stairway to the third-floor apartment where Grau lived. Said Prio nervously: "If I last till Wednesday, I'm saved."

On Friday, Ambassador Belt flew back to Washington. Prio still had his job (and three new men in his Cabinet). Too smart to make Grau mad by an open declaration of candidacy now, Belt had simply fixed his fences. An old schoolmate of his now manned the pivotal Interior ministry.

Well set on the inside track, the Ambassador still had to live down his name. Anti-Americans referred to him as "William" Belt; his paternal grandfather, John Benjamin Belt of Beltsville, Md., had settled in Cuba after serving as Jeff Davis' purchasing agent there during the Civil War. After the 1933 revolution, young Belt became Havana's mayor at 29. In Washington he has worked diligently for bigger sugar quotas and other things good for Cuba. At the U.N. Assembly last fall he attacked the Soviet stand on the veto.

But there was no reason to believe that Cuba entirely appreciated the broad view. Last week ex-Prime Minister Felix Lancis accused Belt of "acting as Washington Ambassador in Cuba, not Cuban Ambassador in Washington."

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