CUBA . . . TALK OF TALKS; GUANTANAMO STRETCHED

Cuba's U.N. ambassador said Havana and Washington should hold direct talks on lifting the 32-year-old economic embargo against Cuba if the U.S. really wants to stem the mounting refugee flow. If not, he said, President Clinton's beefed-up sanctions would lead to civil war on the island and send "millions of illegal immigrants" toward U.S. shores. The White House rebuffed the advice. Meanwhile, the U.S. military prepared to move 5,000 American personnel out of the Guantanamo Bay Navy base so they could move thousands of Cubans in for indefinite detention. Defense Secretary William Perry said the base, which already houses 14,000 Haitian refugees, will add facilities for 10,000 more people by week's end and that many more by early September. A new tack in the US's so-far shaky deterrence effort: Cubans will be encouraged to apply for U.S. visas from Havana. "These are all short-term solutions to a migration problem," says TIME Washington Correspondent James Carney. "If this doesn't end