By Serge F. Kovaleski
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 26, 1999; Page A19

HAVANA, Feb. 25—Cuba made good early today on its threat to suspend most telephone links with the United States in retaliation for the withholding by five American telecommunications firms of $19 million in payments owed to the state-controlled phone company here.

At 12:01 this morning, the Telecommunications Company of Cuba S.A. (ETECSA) -- a joint venture with an Italian partner in which the government has a majority stake -- cut off more than 80 percent of its phone ties with with the United States after a its deadline for payment passed.

Today's edition of Granma, the official newspaper of Cuba's Communist Party, justified the disruption of service by saying that the American phone companies had brazenly violated an agreement with their Cuban counterpart.

The American phone carriers -- AT&T Corp., MCI WorldCom Inc., LDDS Communications Inc., IDB Telecommunications Services Co. and WilTel LLC -- have not paid ETECSA since December for long-distance calls made to Cuba from the United States while they await the outcome of a federal court case in Miami against the Cuban government.

The proceeding involves an effort to collect damages from the Havana government by relatives of four Cuban Americans whose two planes were shot down by Cuban jets north of Havana three years ago. In 1997, a Miami federal judge awarded the relatives a $187 million judgment, but they have tried unsuccessfully since then to obtain the money from Havana. In the meantime, the American phone companies are withholding their payments to Cuba pending a court ruling on whether, as an alternative, the families are judged to be entitled to the money as compensation.

Throughout today, Cuban callers trying to reach the United States by direct dial heard a tinny recorded message that said the lines were congested and asked them to try again later. Some calls got through, however, as the U.S. companies skirted the Cuban sanction by bouncing calls off satellites or rerouting them through third countries, the Reuters news agency reported.

And two other U.S. firms that provide phone service to Cuba -- Sprint Corp. and Puerto Rico-based Telefonica Larga Distancia de Puerto Rico -- were unaffected because their payments were current.

Some telephone operators here told callers whose phone bills are paid in U.S. dollars that they could leave their home numbers and have their calls placed within an hour or so. But some Cubans who pay their bills in pesos were told the wait could take up to five hours. For Cubans who rely on the telephone to communicate with relatives in Miami and elsewhere in the United States, their efforts were frustrating and often fruitless.

"I tried for seven hours this morning to call my aunt in Miami to find out [about] her stomach surgery, but all I kept hearing on the line was that woman's voice saying, 'Congestion, congestion, congestion,' " said taxi driver Miguel Gomez, 25. "It seems to me that the people are always getting caught in the middle of fights between Cuba and the United States."

One official at the U.S. Interest Section in Havana said, "We have had more than the usual difficulties, but it has not shut down our communications."

The phone controversy comes at a time of heightened tension between Cuba and the United States. Last week, Cuba's National Assembly approved tough new penalties on dissidents perceived as sympathetic to the United States. The move followed President Clinton's decision to ease a long-standing economic embargo against this country, an initiative that President Fidel Castro viewed as a ploy to undermine his rule.