By JUAN O. TAMAYO
Herald Staff Writer
ROME -- Cuban President Fidel Castro Sunday said Pope John Paul II can visit Cuba ``anytime'' and added he hopes President Clinton can ``do something'' about the U.S. embargo in his second term in office.
Two days away from his historic audience with the pope, Castro also said he personally did not favor divorce or abortion -- both widespread in Cuba -- and snapped at a journalist who asked about political reforms in Cuba.
``The revolution was the great opening. We do not need another,'' Castro told a news conference at the end of a five-day World Food Summit sponsored by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).
Castro said he hoped now that the U.S. presidential elections are past, Clinton ``can do something to obey'' a final summit statement that indirectly condemns the three-decade-old U.S. trade embargo on Cuba.
The statement was considered unusual because the increased Republican dominance of the U.S. Senate and continued GOP majority in the House augur ill for virtually any attempt to ease U.S.-Cuba relations.
Asked about his papal audience Tuesday -- the first meeting between the staunchly anti-communist pontiff and the last communist ruler of the Western world -- Castro said he had brought only a ``message of friendship'' and that it was up to the pope to take the lead in the conversation.
As to when the pope would follow up with a trip to Cuba, Castro smiled and said ``anytime he wants,'' as he walked out of the news conference. He gave no further details.
Although officials started out the news conference by saying Castro would only answer questions on the FAO summit, the Cuban president repeatedly brought religion into many of his comments.
Asked about the impact of population growth on world hunger, Castro said he was ``personally against'' abortion but that Cuba legally permits it although it's not ``healthy, advisable or convenient.''
He said the same about divorce, adding that he understood and respected the positions of others on the issues.
Cuba has one of the highest abortion rates in Latin America -- contraceptives are expensive and hard to find, abortions are free and easy under Cuba's public health system, and most Cuban men reject condoms. Marital breakups are so widespread that many couples don't even bother to marry.
The church opposes both abortion and divorce, and the pontiff has long insisted on retaining a controversial rule that divorcees cannot receive Holy Communion.
``We're not living in an earthly paradise,'' Castro said. ``As the Bible says, once there was Adam and Eve, and that was all. But now we're thousands of millions . . . and we continue to grow at a terrible pace.''
``In the days of Marx and Engels there was nothing about birth controls. It was believed that communism could be reached by increasing the methods of production,'' Castro added.
``I am not going to give a lesson on Marxism, but in those days it was believed that there were no limits to human and natural resources,'' he said. ``But they do have limits.''
Castro planned to dine Sunday night with Italy's top industrialist, Giovanni Agnelli, at the Rome palace of the honorary chairman of the Fiat industrial giant.
At a separate news conference Sunday, the European Union's commissioner for human rights, Italian Emma Bonino, said Castro and Chinese leader Li Peng were ``dictators'' who should not be welcomed in Italy.
Copyright © 1996 The Miami Herald