SECTION: NATIONAL/FOREIGN; Pg. A1

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HEADLINE: Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.;
CARTER CRITICIZES CUBA, CALLS ON US TO LIFT EMBARGO

BYLINE: By Marion Lloyd, Globe Correspondent

BODY:
HAVANA - The United States should end its embargo on Cuba, former president Jimmy Carter told the Cuban people yesterday, but the communist country should also become part of the "democratic hemisphere," allowing its citizens to travel freely, speak their minds, and elect their own leaders.

Carter's unprecedented, nationally televised address surprised many with its frank criticism of the island's totalitarian regime.

   "Cuba has adopted a socialist government where one political party dominates, and people are not permitted to organize any opposition movements," Carter told hundreds of students and Cuban officials at the University of Havana.

"Your constitution recognizes freedom of speech and association, but other laws deny these freedoms to those who disagree with the government," he said. The Spanish-language address, for which President Fidel Castro was present, was the most closely watched event of Carter's six-day trip to Cuba. It was broadcast live by television and radio throughout Cuba, in an event as historic as Carter's visit.

Carter, 77, is the first current or former US president to visit the island since Castro's 1959 communist revolution.

For every hard-hitting statement, Carter, who is known for his diplomatic style, softened the message by recognizing Cuba's achievements in health care and education and by insisting that he had come to build bridges, not pass judgment.

"I did not come here to interfere in Cuba's internal affairs, but to extend a hand of friendship to the Cuban people and to offer a vision of the future for our two countries and for all the Americas," he said.

But the message that Cuba should move toward democracy was unmistakable.

"That vision includes a Cuba fully integrated into a democratic hemisphere, participating in a Free Trade Area of the Americas and with our citizens traveling without restraint to visit each other," he said.

"I want the people of the United States and Cuba to share more than a love of baseball and wonderful music. I want us to be friends and to respect each other," he added.

Later yesterday, Carter threw the first ball at a Cuban all-star baseball game, one of the few elements of US culture that still thrives in Cuba.

In Washington, President Bush urged Cubans to "demand freedom."

He said of Carter's trip: "It doesn't complicate my foreign policy because I haven't changed my foreign policy - and that is Fidel Castro is a dictator and he is oppressive and he ought to have free elections and he ought to have a free press and he ought to free his prisoners and he ought to encourage free enterprise."

Carter noted that when he became president in 1977, there were only two democracies in South America and one in Central America. Today almost every country in the Americas is a democracy.

He acknowledged that he and Castro held "differences of opinion" over the definition of democracy, a theme that has cropped up several times since Carter's arrival on Sunday.

Carter referred to the difficulties caused by the 41-year-old US trade embargo, which he said he hoped Congress would soon repeal.

But he also argued that trade restrictions were not the cause of Cuba's economic crisis. He cited Cuba's trade relations with more than 100 countries and said it could buy medicines more cheaply from Mexico than from the United States.

But while his opposition to the embargo is well-known, Carter's openness in critizing the island's political system caught many in the United States off guard.

"What was a surprise was that he gave Castro a lecture in democracy," said Joe Garcia, director of the Cuban American National Foundation, the most influential Cuban exile organization in the United States.

"It's a very positive first step. That Castro had to sit there and hear talk of democracy and things told to his nation that they haven't heard for more than 40 years," said Garcia, in a telephone interview from his Miami home.

Garcia said he was particularly gratified that Carter's speech mentioned a controversial pro-democracy campaign on the island, called the Varela Project.

"It was the first time anyone in Cuba had heard about it," he said of the project, in which dissidents have gathered more than 10,000 signatures to force a referendum on political change in Cuba.

Cuban officials have dismissed the document, presented to the National Assembly last week, as being funded and sponsored by Cuban exiles in the United States.

Members of the foundation visited Carter at his human rights center in Atlanta this month to spell out their wish list for his Cuba trip.

With the exception of Carter's call to end the embargo, Garcia said, "he did most of what we wanted him to do. It's incredible."

Other Cuba analysts criticized the speech, which was received with polite applause by the students and by Castro himself.

"There was an element of naivete in his presentation. The fact is, Latin America is not a zone of democracy. Latin America is a zone of pseudo-democracies," said Larry Birns, a Cuba specialist with the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs.

He said noted that corruption and violence still plagues plague many Latin American countries, limiting the functioning of their democracies.

"Institutionally, Latin America has as many problems as Cuba," he said, "And there's no reason to think that a free market would change that."

GRAPHIC: PHOTO, 1. A mother and son watching Jimmy Carter's speech in Havana. / REUTERS PHOTO 2. Jimmy Carter called on Cuba yesterday to allow its citizens to live more freely and to become part of the "democratic hemisphere." He visited the country's AIDS sanitarium and was greeted by Yudelsi Garcia, 15, who is HIV positive.

LOAD-DATE: May 15, 2002