HAVANA, Aug 20 (Reuters) - Communist-run Cuba, one of a handful of states on Washington's list of alleged terrorism sponsors, condemned on Thursday U.S. military attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan as "arrogant" and counter-productive.

``President William Clinton ignored the sovereignty of Sudan and Afghanistan and launched a theatrical bombardment which overshadowed his recent sex scandal,'' said state-run news agency Prensa Latina, which generally expresses the opinions of Cuba's ruling Communist Party.

``But the attacks, with the pretext of answering terrorism, may fuel more violence instead of eliminating it,'' the news agency added in its first report on the strikes.

The United States launched attacks on Sudan and Afghanistan earlier Thursday to hit what Clinton called ``terrorist-related'' bases believed to have been behind the recent bombings of U.S.

embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 263 people.

The Prensa Latina article, headed ``Arrogance does not kill terrorism, it fuels it,'' warned that the strikes may provoke further violence.

``...The arrogant use of military bases in the region to respond to the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania may create a chain reaction,'' it said.

It added that the lack of social justice for Arab nations and the ``bias'' of the United States in the Middle East ``explain in part, although they do not justify, some extremist actions against the U.S. military presence in the zone.''

Cuba, at odds with the United States since Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution, has long supported the Palestine Liberation Organisation and broke relations with Israel in the early 1970s.

Prensa Latina's direct criticism of Clinton contrasted with Castro's recent conciliatory comments about the U.S. leader whom he had called a ``man of peace'' and absolved him of responsibility for other alleged ``terrorist'' elements planning violence against Cuba from American soil.

18:27 08-20-98

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