AS a newly elected president, Bill Clinton was well placed to regain the foreign policy initiative from Congress, to push his own ideas on issues of specific interest and to make new appointments to key bureaucratic posts through which he could seek to stamp his own mark on America's international role. An approach to Cuba more rational, if not more accommodating, than the one pursued under Reagan and Bush thus appeared at least a possibility. “The choice for President Clinton,” Peter Hakim of the Inter-American Dialogue told a congressional panel in February 1993, “is whether to pursue a fresh and more activist approach, involving an effort to mobilize an international coalition and begin bargaining with Cuba, or whether to continue a policy of passively waiting for the Cuban authorities to take the first steps, or for Fidel to pass from the scene.” The particular choices Hakim outlined were of less immediate interest than the general thrust of his testimony: Clinton had options on Cuba that were not available to his predecessor.