GRAPEVINE

By DAVID ELLIS

Bush Administration officials are bracing themselves for Fidel Castro's next "dirty trick": the lifting of age restrictions on travel abroad. Currently, only older Cubans (men over 45, women over 40) are allowed to visit relatives in the U.S. The State Department knows it will be flooded with ; requests for tourist visas if the age limit is lifted. "The Cubans are trying to embarrass us," grouses one official. The U.S. suspects that the dictator plans to repeat the 1980 Mariel boatlift, in which he exported malcontents and hardened criminals to southern Florida. "We've been on the blacklist because we don't allow free travel," responds a Havana policymaker. "Now we are doing what they demand, and still we're bad guys."

With reporting by Sidney Urquhart