It looks as if Fidel Castro is coming in out of the cold. At the global conference on Law of the Sea now occupying its 5,000 participants in Caracas, Venezuela, the caucus of the Latin American nations voted to seat the Cuban delegation. President Luis Echeverria of Mexico, which never broke off relations with Cuba, has undertaken a personal campaign to persuade other Latin American governments to end the political and economic quarantine imposed, on U.S. initiative, in 1962. Three months ago Argentina—which, along with Peru and four of the Caribbean states, has recently recognized the Castro government—bulldozed Washington into agreeing on the sale to Cuba of automobiles manufactured by General Motors’ Argentine subsidiary.
For nearly a decade the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee has wanted to send its chief of staff, Pat Holt, to look things over in Havana, but the State Department steadfastly blocked the trip. Last December Secretary Kissinger gave (it is said reluctantly) the authorization, and early this month Mr. Holt spent a week in Havana. He has made no public report, but is known to have talked at length with Castro and his principal associates.
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