Pope salutes Cuba's `courageous' Catholics

Addressing diplomats assigned to the Vatican, John Paul also called for ``serious reflection on the morality of the economic and financial markets'' in current turmoil in Asia.

While weighted toward the world's trouble spots, the pontiff's New Year's review was not uniformly bleak. He praised initiatives for dialogue on Northern Ireland and the two Koreas and the ``more or less relative peace'' holding in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Eleven days before he is to set out for Havana, John Paul said he hoped the first papal visit to the Communist-ruled island ``will give me an opportunity to strengthen not only the courageous Catholics of that country but also all their fellow citizens in their efforts to achieve a homeland ever more just and united.''

The pope also turned his thoughts to another Communist country, China, saying he hopes for ``the establishment of more friendly relations with the Holy See'' to help his flock there.

Two Catholic Churches exist in China: one sanctioned by the government that forswears allegiance to Rome and another whose followers remain loyal to the pope and whose clergy are occasionally jailed for their defiance.

First on John Paul's list of ``crisis spots'' was Algeria, ``a whole country held hostage to an inhuman violence that no political cause, far less a religious motivation, could legitimate.''

``I insist on repeating clearly to all, once again, that no one may kill in God's name,'' John Paul said.

John Paul reiterated his strong calls against embargoes as weapons, recalling ``our brothers and sisters in Iraq, living under a pitiless embargo.''

``The weak and the innocent cannot pay for mistakes for which they are not responsible,'' the pope said of the U.N. sanctions, which the Security Council imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.