Those were the questions about the United States from Cuban Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina, a man who was 2 years old when Fidel Castro and his revolutionaries marched into Havana.

 He came from the Communist Youth Movement and is recognized around the world for his easy-going style and his Miami Vice-style jackets, which he wears over black T-shirts.

 He has a reformist image and good connections outside Cuba.

 But what he had to say when he greeted 35 American journalists on their arrival in Havana sounded very much like what Castro had to say when he spoke with the same visitors.

 But there were differences. Castro says, "Our conditions for ending the U.S. embargo are that it will end without conditions or it will last forever."

 Robaina puts it this way: "We are compelled to be optimistic. The solutions are not around the corner. The embargo, it is not so simple as to who takes the first step. Let's work together."

 Ricardo Alarcn, the head of the National Assembly and former Cuban ambassador to the United Nations and who spoke to us in English, says, "For Cuba, the United States is the main problem. From the American point of view, Cuba is not very important."

 Foreign investments are coming into the country -- 55 propositions with the Cubans to build hotels to accommodate the 2 million or so visitors who bring hard currency into the country and leave it. They come out of curiosity. They come for the beautiful beaches.

 But there is a problem. There isn't a real infrastructure to support tourism. Not many places to go for entertainment. Not many fine restaurants. Certainly no casinos. The taxi service is good, but the cars are old and small, and other forms of transportation are not available.

 But for now tourism is it. As sweet as sugar used to be here. The economic benefits are obvious. So are the contrasts between those who work in tourism and those who work for the state. Those who are paid in pesos and those who collect dollars.

 Osmany Ciefuegos, minister of tourism and an old hardliner, whose late brother, Camilo, was one of the icons of the revolution, has developed the tourist industry into a cash cow for Cuba.

 But he says, "If we had another way to solve the economic problems we have, we might not need tourism. But we don't right now."

 Michael Kozak, who heads the U.S. Interests Section here, says that the limited steps that Cuba took legalizing the use of dollars, permitting foreign investments in joint ventures, tinkering with the system, weren't enough.

 A claimed growth rate of 7.8 percent in 1996 fell to a claimed 2.5 percent in 1997 and a projected 1 percent for this year.

 And Kozak believes the growth would be negative if it were not for lower world oil prices.

 His opinion is disputed by Jose Luis Rodriguez, the minister of economy.

 "We are not in a rush to complete the transition overnight," he says. "We have no-charge housing, no starvation or people sleeping in the streets. But we can't give everybody everything they want."

 That's the one thing we heard here that is truly undisputed.
 

•  GREGORY FAVRE, vice president of news for The McClatchy Co., was one of 35 U.S. journalists from the American Society of Newspaper Editors who visited Cuba last week. McClatchy owns The Nando Times.