Pope won't spur political change, Cuban official says

Published Monday, December 29, 1997, in the Miami Herald

Pope won't spur political change, Cuban official says

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- (AP) -- Cuba will not undergo rapid political change after the visit by the pope next month, as some Eastern European countries did nearly 10 years ago, one of the island's top leaders said.

``The pope is not going to provoke an earthquake, but is going to open, a little more, the relations between the state and the Catholic Church,'' said Ricardo Alarcon, president of the National Assembly, in an interview published Sunday in El Nuevo Dia, a San Juan newspaper.

Alarcon, a former foreign minister, said the pope's visit Jan. 21-25 will put Cuba on the front page around the world and show that the socialist country has relations with many other nations, despite efforts by the United States to leave it isolated.

``To try to give the pope's visit a political sense would be a mistake,'' Alarcon said. ``Nor can you identify it as an act of support for the Cuban Revolution. It's a pastoral visit. The pope is not a subversive, he's the head of state of the Vatican and the leader of the Catholic Church.''

Instead of rapid political change, Alarcon predicted a continuation of the growing diversification of Cuba's economy as more foreign corporations do business on the island. The companies being left out, because of the U.S. economic embargo, are U.S. companies, he said.

Alarcon predicted that U.S. corporate interests opposed to the embargo would gradually gain strength and the most hard-line anti-Castro Cuban exiles would die off, leading to an eventual softening of the U.S. policy toward Cuba.