It was reported last week that one of the group's top officials had resigned amid speculation that a planned conference between exiles and Cubans on the island had been put in danger by the expressed views of the CCD's new leader.

The tension flared over the writings of new president Alejandro Portes, a Princeton sociologist and respected researcher on the South Florida immigrant experience.

Most scandalous to the Fidel Castro government was Portes' characterization of mid-level Cuban officials living the fat life, while less privileged comrades suffered scarcities.

Portes wrote a provocative analysis of Cuba's identity as ``the little besieged country,'' a convenient image kept alive in large part by U.S. sanctions against the island government.

In the article ``Strategic Neglect,'' published in the fall issue of The American Prospect, Portes examines Cuba's decades-old survival tactics, particularly its dependence on U.S. hostility to keep afloat its embattled image.

No wonder the Castro government is up in arms over the article. Portes has exposed the Cuban game: appear to receive dialogue, but reject substantial exchange -- and change -- at all cost.

That such an article evokes even a stir from a regime that claims to welcome engagement is telling. In the eyes of the world, the chief obstacle to open relations with Cuba is the ``right-wing exile lobby.'' Popular opinion usually depicts exiles as the intransigents who reject views that are different from that of the pack.

But in fact the great intolerance rises out of Havana insecurity. The very fact that a conference designed to promote dialogue could be endangered by the opinions of a scholar should tell us something about Cuba's true stand on open talks: We'll let you talk as long as you say what we want to hear.

Isn't the core of healthy dialogue well-presented differences of opinions? Apparently not in Havana, where officials still see a need to skew exchanges by picking and choosing who will get exit permits to travel to conferences abroad.

``In defense of this intransigence, Fidel and his collaborators are willing to meet with outsiders, host foreign leaders and delegations, and posture as reasonable and tolerant people. But any genuine political or economic threat is met with an iron fist,'' writes Portes, who believes the U.S. government could strip Cuba of its ``besieged country'' motif by lifting its sanctions.

Ostensibly, the lifting of sanctions is what Cuba also wants.

But is it really?

Portes notes the curious episode of José Imperatori, the Cuban diplomat ordered kicking and screaming out of Washington, D.C., last February for his suspected role in a spy ring. The defiant Imperatori even went on a hunger strike to proclaim his government's innocence.

``Why should an educated man like Imperatori defend a regime that he knows to be economically and ideologically bankrupt?'' asks Portes. ``The standard answer is privilege.''

And the larger answer, as this scholar reveals, is Cuba's need to stay loyal to its socialism -- not to any Marxist ideals, but to whatever keeps the revolution going, be it tourism, foreign investments, cash remittances, and, yes, the U.S. embargo.

A true opening, Portes concludes, might turn Castro into ``just another small-country dictator.''

I guess that's why such opinions can endanger attempts at dialogue.