ALMARIA VELLA — The Foreign Minister, Cardenal Marín, received the ambassador of the state responsible for the naval cordon south of Cordoba Bay in a meeting described by ministry officials as "grave, courteous, and unambiguous." The phrase is the Cardenal's own, and those who have worked with him will recognise in it the tonal register he reserves for matters upon which he does not intend to be moved.

The forty activists taken from the intercepted vessel, none of them Almarian citizens, were transferred Tuesday evening to the port authorities at Almaria Vella. Their legal status is, for now, that of persons under clarification — a category peculiar to our statute book and, in the present circumstances, a useful one. They are understood to be lodged in the dockside facility maintained for such contingencies, and to have been visited by consular officers of three separate states before nightfall.

The Cardenal's office issued no photograph of the meeting and no joint statement. The silence is its own instrument. What was said within the drawing room will, in the old manner of this ministry, emerge only in the written reply the ambassador is now understood to be preparing. Crown sources indicate that His Majesty has been kept closely informed.

At Sant Joan, where the Cardenal is to preach on Sunday, the parish office confirmed that the homily will proceed as announced. The corridors of the cathedral, quiet this week of visitors but not of petitioners, remain — in a phrase the Cardenal has made his own — "the week's petition."