Canadian premier asks Castro to free four dissidents

Canadian officials said the four are Marta Beatriz Roque, Vladimiro Roca, Felix Bonne and Rene Gomez Manzano. Roca, the most prominent of the four, is the son of a founder of the Cuban Communist Party.

The four were arrested last year for trying to reactivate a human rights organization and have been held in custody since. No trial date has been set.

Asked for Castro's reaction, Chretien told reporters: ``I don't think he was very happy. He would have preferred I did not mention it.''

After an initial 2 1/2-hour meeting with Castro, Chretien met with Cardinal Jaime Ortega and other church leaders to discuss human rights issues.

Chretien also dispatched two of his top foreign policy advisors -- Jim Bartleman and Michael Kergin -- to meet separately with Elizardo Sanchez who, as president of the National Council for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, is Cuba's most visible human rights activist.

Bartleman and Kergin are former Canadian ambassadors to Cuba, and Bartleman was Chretien's special envoy who arranged this week's trip of the prime minister.

Chretien's two-day visit to Cuba flies in the face of U.S. policy, which seeks to isolate Castro's regime, notably through a 36-year embargo. The White House reacted Monday with polite disagreement over Canada's policy of engagement with Cuba.

``We have a respectful disagreement with the prime minister on how best to achieve democratic change in Cuba,'' White House spokesman Mike McCurry said.

McCurry stressed that the visit ``doesn't affect the working relationship we have with the prime minister,'' but insisted that establishing ties with Castro would never bring Cuba into the hemispheric fold.

``We certainly understand [Canada's] desire to achieve change through engagement, but we do not believe there is evidence engagement with Cuba has produced any change,'' he said.

The spokesman noted that Canada argues that the U.S. embargo is ineffective and he acknowledged that the trade ban ``has not brought about a blossoming of democratic liberties in Cuba.''

But he added: ``We think over time it represents better prospect for bringing about change.''

Asked why President Clinton emphatically defends his engagement policy with Beijing despite its communist regime, McCurry said: ``In China there has been some evidence that the leadership is moving toward market economics. There is no such evidence with respect to Cuba.''

Castro greeted Chretien on Sunday with a startling speech equating the U.S. embargo to the Holocaust and a staunch defense of his regime, which McCurry denounced as deluded.

The U.S. blockade is ``genocide,'' Castro said. ``That is turning a nation into a ghetto and imposing on it a new version of the Holocaust; it's like using biological, chemical or nuclear weapons.''

McCurry said Castro's remarks welcoming Chretien to Cuba were ``ample evidence'' that Castro is ``woefully out of touch with history.''

State Department spokesman James Foley, asked about Castro's sharp attack on the embargo's effects on Cubans, replied: ``Clearly, the plight of the Cuban people, their economic backwardness, is wholly the result of the economic system in place for the last four decades.

``Cuba is in the same category as other communist states, but it's in its own category in having failed to make a transition to a market-based economy. And that clearly is the root cause of economic problems in Cuba,'' he said.