By Anita Snow
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, February 17, 1999; 2:45 a.m. EST

HAVANA (AP) -- Cuban President Fidel Castro met with Roman Catholic bishops from across the Americas as the prelates wound up two days of talks on the church's role in the Western Hemisphere.

Dressed in a dark suit, Castro on Tuesday evening began his own talks with the 31 members of the Latin American Episcopal Conference, meeting for the first time in Cuba.

Earlier Tuesday, the bishops called for an end to the U.S. embargo against Cuba and said they hoped for improved relations between the two countries.

``It has always been the position of the bishops of the United States ... to seek the lessening and even the ending of the embargo,'' said Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of Newark, N.J.

President Clinton announced in January modest measures designed to improve contact between the American and Cuban people.

``We hope they are just the beginning of more substantial changes,'' the archbishop said.

Clinton's measures would let more Americans send money to Cubans, offer direct mail service between the two countries and expand direct charter flights, but the embargo would remain intact.

McCarrick was among five cardinals, 25 bishops and one priest who gathered for the conference.

For the first time, the group included 15 bishops from the United States and Canada. Church sources said the meeting could be the first move toward permanently expanding the Latin American conference to include bishops from North America.

The bishops said they hoped that by meeting here they would provide a model for U.S.-Cuba relations.

``We hope that this will be another good step toward the openness that the Holy Father spoke of'' when Pope John Paul II visited Cuba last year, McCarrick said.

During meetings behind closed doors at a luxury hotel, the prelates have studied John Paul's call for intensive evangelization in the Western Hemisphere and the church's role in the region in the next millennium.

Also on the agenda was a look at the Cuban church one year after the pontiff's historic January 1998 trip.

The president of the bishop's conference, Archbishop Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, said the group planned to provide the Cuban church with funds to build more sanctuaries. It also plans to send more priests and missionaries to help in evangelization efforts once it gets approval from the Cuban government.

Church gains since the papal visit have been modest. But church leaders consider them important in a country that was once officially atheist, expelled foreign priests and closed church schools.