HAVANA --- Cuban President Fidel Castro Tuesday furiously rejected a plan by fierce critics of his government in the United States to provide food and medical aid to needy Cubans while maintaining the U.S. economic embargo on the island.

"The Cuban government, with all the dignity in the world and in the name of the Cuban people who are a symbol of the greatest dignity in the world, says 'no','' Castro said.

Castro was speaking during a four-hour appearance on Cuban state television that began late Monday and went on into the early hours of Tuesday.

"The idea consists in offering humanitarian aid with humiliating conditions and maintaining a rigorous blockade,'' Castro scoffed.

The Cuban leader, whose comments mostly focused on appraising last month's landmark visit to the island by Pope John Paul, was responding to a plan proposed last week by a Miami-based exile organization, the Cuban American National Foundation, and supported by a fierce anti-Castro critic in the Congress, Senator Jesse Helms.

The plan to channel donated food and medical supplies from the United States to Cuba surfaced after the pope condemned the 35-year U.S. economic embargo during his Jan. 21-25 visit to the communist island.

"It (the plan) is a repugnant and immoral maneuver, a rude reply to the pope's proposals...an insult to the Cuban religious institutions and a challenge to the (Cuban) people who resist and will resist with honor,'' Castro said.

"Cuba is not begging, Cuba is not asking for humanitarian aid, Cuba is asking for the end of the blockade,'' said the 71- year-old veteran communist.

He added that the plan was aimed at scuttling another proposal in Congress to modify the embargo by allowing sales to Cuba of food and medicines. Castro said this other plan went in the right direction since it sought to ease the embargo.

Aides of Helms, who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and who co-sponsored legislation to toughen the anti-Cuba embargo two years ago, said their plan responded to the pope's call for an end to the trade ban.

The aides, speaking in Havana Friday at the end of an unusual visit to Cuba, said that there was no question of the embargo being lifted.

One of the aides, Marc Thiessen, who is spokesman for Helms, said that "what Senator Helms is trying to do is to find an initiative that responds to the pope''.

He said Helms' support for the humanitarian plan was based on a desire to help Cuban people and also to give the Roman Catholic Church continued support following the papal visit, and to help the church "expand the space that the pope has opened''.

The proposal is for U.S. donated medicine and food, possibly including some U.S. government assistance, to be channeled through independent organizations in Cuba to reach needy people.

A key recipient of the planned aid would be the church charity Caritas, which Thiessen said badly needed resources.

Thiessen said if Castro's government turned away the aid then the Cuban leader would not be able to claim that the United States was to blame for Cuba's economic problems.

"There's no way of being on the right side of saying 'no' to humanitarian aid,'' Thiessen added.

But Castro made clear he did not agree.

The Cuban leader had stressed before the pope's visit he was not seeking a condemnation of the U.S. embargo.

But Tuesday he was clearly pleased at the pontiff's comments and the fact they have stirred fresh debate about the embargo in the United States. He described the pope's comments on the embargo as "a hard blow to its (the embargo's) promoters.''

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