Sources Say Carter Will Visit Havana

U.S. government sources say the Bush administration has approved a request from former President Jimmy Carter to visit Cuba.

A trip to Havana would make Mr. Carter the most senior U.S. figure to visit the communist-run island since the 1959 revolution.

"He will probably come in mid-May," one of the sources said, confirming that the former president had received permission for a license to visit the Caribbean nation - needed because of a U.S. prohibition on normal travel by Americans to Cuba.

Mr. Carter is a critic of long-standing U.S. sanctions on Cuba and is deemed by President Fidel Castro to be the friendliest of the 10 U.S. presidents to have held office during his 43-year rule.

While a Carter visit would be likely to bolster the anti-embargo lobby in the United States, the White House is probably calculating that the independent diplomacy by the former president would also put pressure on Castro on human rights and democracy issues, including the cases of some jailed dissidents.

Mr. Carter, known for his globe-trotting to monitor elections and press humanitarian causes, would be the only former or sitting U.S. president to travel to Cuba under Castro, from whom he has a long-standing invitation to visit.

"We want him to see our country, not so that he supports us or anything like that, indeed so that he may make all the criticisms he wants," Castro said recently, reiterating the offer after hearing that Mr. Carter wanted to come.

"If he wants, we'll fill Revolution Square so they can criticize us as much as they want, because we are so convinced of the moral, ethical, ideological, political and human strength of our revolution," added Castro.

During the Carter presidency from 1977 through 1981, restrictions on American travel to Cuba were briefly lifted, and low-level diplomatic ties were established, in the form of "Interests Sections" missions in Havana and Washington.

The Carter presidency was also one of the most difficult times in U.S.-Cuban relations, including a chaotic mass exodus of some 125,000 Cuban emigrants in the 1980 "Mariel Boatlift," named after the port west of Havana from which most departed.

Even before Tuesday's news of the Treasury Department's approval of Mr. Carter's visit under licenses allowing travel to Cuba for educational, cultural and other sorts of exchange, the White House had urged him to speak up for change in Cuba.

"If President Carter were to travel to Cuba, the president hopes his message would be very direct and straightforward, that in order to have human rights in Cuba, it's important for Fidel Castro to allow democracy to take root, to stop the repression and to stop the imprisonments, to bring freedom to the people of Cuba," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, at a recent news briefing.

Dissidents in Cuba welcomed the visit, though they said they did not expect it to herald significant change either within internal Cuban politics or in respect to the embargo, which Havana calls a blockade.

"Perhaps, however, it will help Vladimiro get out a few months' earlier," said dissident Elizardo Sanchez, referring to Cuba's best-known political prisoner, Vladimiro Roca.

Roca, a former fighter pilot in Castro's military and son of a founding father of Cuban communism, Blas Roca, was jailed in mid-1997 for anti-government activities and is serving a five-year sentence, set to end on July 16, 2002.

A Cuban visit would be likely to include meetings with Castro and tours of health and educational institutions, which the Castro government considers to be areas of great pride.

But like many Western officials who come to Cuba, Mr. Carter is also expected to meet with leading moderate dissidents including Sanchez, diplomatic sources said.

Cuba maintains a one-party system and labels all dissidents trouble-makers and anti-patriots, obeying orders from the U.S. government or Cuban American exile groups in Florida.

Some of the most fiercely anti-Castro of those exile groups have already expressed their opposition to a Carter visit, saying it would merely strengthen Castro's "dictatorship."

The former U.S. president anticipated those criticisms when he announced the planned visit last month, and has said that the best way to bring about democratic change in Cuba would be to have the maximum contact between the two nations and their people, so that Cubans could learn the advantages of freedom.

By Andrew Cawthorne