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President greets freed Cubans - Slams Dictatorships*** At mid-afternoon at the White House, Bush met with 11 Cuban exile activists, one-time prisoners and their relatives. The meeting was closed, but the exiles emerged to the driveway to speak to journalists. ''He said categorically that the embargo is supported by this administration,'' said Angel de Fana, who spent 20 years in Cuban prisons before leaving for exile. ``There is no way that he is going to reduce the pressure on this oppressive regime.''

`SATISFIED' Another exile, Isabel Roque, broke into tears as she approached a microphone. ''We leave here satisfied,'' said Roque, sister of dissident economist Martha Beatriz Roque, who was given a 20-year jail term in a sweeping crackdown last month. ``He [President Bush] will not abandon us. Rest assured that this president is on our side.'' White House aides said the scheduled half-hour meeting stretched to a full hour. ***

No Moral Coherence - Human Trophies *** Gabriel García Márquez's support of Fidel Castro takes the novelist down a bitter street. A wave of denunciations against the comandante, unleashed by the West's most important intellectuals, has swamped the Nobel laureate.

It all happened as a result of the recent executions of three young men, shot dead ''to prevent an American invasion'' -- as if Castro had become an Aztec priest who conjures fate by means of human sacrifices.

Suddenly, the mutiny was directed at García Márquez, the prior of Latin American literature. ''Where is García Márquez's signature, in the face of this limitless cruelty?'' everyone asked. The author first said that he repudiated the death penalty but then made clear his inalterable affection for the dictator.

Murderers also have friends, and García Márquez wasn't willing, like José Saramago, to break with the old tyrant just because of a handful of new victims and some fresh blood on the execution wall.

………………..How can someone justify the huge moral concession of traveling to Havana to support or show affection for the oldest of the Latin American executioners? Very simple: by rescuing one or two captives and, if possible, returning home with them in a suitcase and exhibiting them as a great diplomatic success.