Fidel on the Road

Moscow's next ranking Communist guest will be Cuba's Premier Fidel Castro. Some time this month he is due to begin a two-week tour of the Soviet Union, climaxing a two-month hegira that has already carried him through six African and East European countries. During his talks in the Kremlin, Castro will doubtless discuss continuation of Soviet aid to Cuba (more than $1.5 million per day) with--just conceivably--a new emphasis by the Soviets on what Cuba can do for them in the new era of detente.

That possibility, and Castro's own shenanigans, produced some fascinating speculation. For a while, it was the usual hyperenergetic Castro road show, right down to the impromptu games that Fidel would organize whenever his itinerary took him past a basketball court. But when he arrived in Warsaw, an ambulance waited outside the Council of Ministers Building during the official reception. From then on, Castro's main sport was batting down stories that he was suffering from a heart condition. During a tour of a school he protested to newsmen, "I have a heart of steel! Some day it will fail me, but today I have a heart of steel!"

Diplomatic Illness. It was possible that Castro, who is a bit paunchy at 45, was "simply tired," as Polish government spokesmen insisted. But then there was the theory, endorsed by some European newspapers, that Castro was suffering a diplomatic illness meant to convey his unhappiness at a possible attempt by Polish officials to arrange a meeting between him and Richard Nixon, who had passed through Warsaw a few days earlier.

Though officials in Washington and Warsaw denied it, it was an intriguing theory. On the formal diplomatic level, U.S. policy is still frosty toward Castro --and toward an attempt by Peru's left-wing military regime to reinstate Cuba in the Organization of American States. Last week the OAS voted 13 to 7 (with three abstentions) against a Peruvian proposal that each member be permitted to decide independently whether to resume relations with Havana. Along with most OAS members, Washington is opposed to a reconciliation unless and until Castro agrees to behave more "responsibly"--that is, to stop sending subversives into Latin America.

Though Castro has been abusive as ever toward the U.S. and the OAS, longtime observers now sense that his tune could change quickly--if Moscow were to order it and if Washington were to come across with an agreement to, say, give up the Navy's obsolete base at Guant`anamo and invite Cuba back into the lucrative U.S. sugar quota system.

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