SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 026

LENGTH: 517 words

HEADLINE: Adams calls on U.S. to end Cuba embargo

BYLINE: By JIM DEE SPECIAL TO THE HERALD

BODY:
HAVANA - Ending his four-day visit to Cuba yesterday, Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams reiterated his call for the United States to end its 40-year-old economic embargo of the Caribbean island nation.

"Our support for the end of the blockade is well known," Adams told reporters. "I would very respectfully say to those in public life in the U.S.A. who support this position to come to Cuba to learn for themselves what has been accomplished." The Sinn Fein leader yesterday toured Havana's Juan Manual Marquez Pediatric Hospital and warmly praised the medical treatment given there to children stricken with cancer.

He also held a lengthy meeting with Cuba's Foreign Affairs Minister Felipe Perez Roque, who labeled Adams' visit "a high honor" made all the more rewarding by Adams' "message of encouragement and solidarity to our country."

Perez Roque expressed hope that the recent U.S. shipment of food for victims of Hurricane Michelle would become "the first signal of an ongoing process, but I cannot be sure that this will be the case."

"Cuba does not harbor any hatred towards the United States," Perez Roque said. "Cuba does not hold the U.S. people accountable for our hardship."

He also said he hoped that "the last dinosaur that probably roams the Earth - which is the U.S. blockade of Cuba," will soon be extinct.

Adams' visit here, which began Sunday night, has been criticized by many of Northern Ireland's pro-British unionists, who say it proves he remains a hard-line revolutionary at heart. Likewise some in Washington have expressed displeasure at the trip.

U.S. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), a staunch Sinn Fein backer, has called it a mistake.

A key element of the visit, discussions with Cuban President Fidel Castro, were held away from the media glare late Tuesday night in one of Castro's private compounds - of which few Havanans even know the location.

The talks lasted six hours, stretching into the wee hours of yesterday morning, and covered a wide area, Adams said, ranging "from Third World debt, globalization, issues of social justice, democracy, socialism, and so on."

He said Castro was well informed about the Irish peace process and raised concerns about Britain's refusal to set up an independent inquiry into the murder of Patrick Finucane, a Belfast Catholic lawyer slain in 1989 by pro-British paramilitaries. The Finucane family alleges state involvement in the killing.

Adams said Castro talked of having some Celtic blood, saying the pair joked his name could have been "Fidel McCastro." Adams toured Old Havana yesterday afternoon to see the area's striking Spanish colonial-era architecture, the best preserved in Latin America.

While the area's impressive architecture is somewhat sullied by many buildings' faded concrete exteriors, about 10 percent of the buildings are being restored annually with the profits of the growing tourist trade.

Adams departed Cuba for Dublin last night.

Caption: JOKING: Northern Ireland Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams, left, speaks with Cuban President Fidel Castro at a school in Havana yesterday. AP PHOTO

LOAD-DATE: December 20, 2001