Nothing is more inconvenient from the perspective of great power politics than the intrusion of particular individuals whose lives become entangled in dramatic ways with carefully laid plans and historic events such as summits.

From the latest intrusion—the arrest of Micholas Daniloff— Americans relearned important, disturbing facts about Soviet attitudes toward evidence, fairness, and individual rights.To prevent such facts from upsetting the placid course of its diplomacy, the Soviet Union goes to great lengths to close its society and to control information about how its government deals with its citizens. To prevent such facts from being collected, discussed, and published, the Soviet government condemns such men as Yuri Orlov to forced labor and Siberian exile. And it demands ransom to let them emigrate.Men like Orlov, Andrei Sakharov, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Anatoly Shcharansky are a very special problem for a repressive government. They are also its most impressive product. The Soviet system is now old enough to have produced a large crop of such home-grown heroes who have honed their sense of reality against official "truths," their courage against daily intimidation, and their integrity against temptations of success and safety. These are the men who intrude into the carefully laid diplomatic plans of governments.On the other side of the world, another such man has intruded into France's congenial relationship with Castro's Cuba. He is Ricardo Bofill Pages, president of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights.

For the second time, Bofill has taken refuge in France's embassy in Havana, where he is once again creating a problem for French diplomats, a cause célebre for Paris's large population of political exiles, and a challenge for France's newly established Bureau of Human Rights.

Bofill must be a special embarrassment to Fidel Castro's government. First, because he was a professor of Marxism, of all things. Second, because he was successful, having become a leader of the Cuban opposition inside Cuba at an early age. Third, because neither imprisonment, nor long sketches in solitary confinement, nor incarceration in a mental hospital, nor separation from wife and son, nor hunger and harsh treatment have broken his spirit.

Bofill was first arrested in 1967, charged with ideological deviations, and sentenced to twelve years at hard labor. When he was released in 1972, the Cuban government, ever solicitous for the well being of its citizens, found him a job sweeping out a factory in Havana. Bofill persisted in protesting human rights violations and was arrested again in 1980, charged again with dissidence and sentenced to five years in the Combinado del Este prison—where he met Armando Valladares, author of the recent widely acclaimed book on Cuban prisons, Against All Hope.

After two years Bofill was again released for reasons of health but was skipped of civil rights, denied a job, and kept under heavy surveillance. Still he continued to speak out. He did not, however, desire to return to Castro's prison. Sensing that he was about to be arrested, in April 1983 Bofill took refuge in the French Embassy in Havana.It was a time of warm relations between France's Socialist government and the Castro regime. Regis Debray, special adviser to President François Mitterrand, was a close personal friend of Castro. Three French ministers had visited Havana, including Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson, and all had been warmly received. Therefore, when Cuban Vice President Carlos Rafael Rodriguez offered personal assurances that Bofill would be allowed to go into exile in France, the French government was delighted to see an end to the inconvenient episode.

But on September 3, 1983, Bofill was again arrested, held in a psychiatric hospital, then sent back to Combinado del Este. By now, however, his health had deteriorated seriously. He was again released and again intruded into Franco-Cuban relations, once more seeking refuge in France's embassy in Havana. Now, however, the Franco-Cuban honeymoon may be over.

France has a new government with a new Gaullist prime minister, Jacques Chirac, and a new Bureau of Human Rights headed by Claude Malhuret, former director of the distinguished French humanitarian organizations, Medecins Sans Frontiers. It will be extremely interesting to see how the new French team handles the inconvenient intrusion of the heroic Ricardo Bofill.