VATICAN CITY (AP) -- After years of verbal fencing between Cuba and the Vatican, Fidel Castro and Pope John Paul II finally appear ready to meet for talks that could lead to a papal visit to the Communist nation next year.
Castro is one of the few world leaders John Paul has never met during his nearly 18-year-long papacy and Cuba is the only Latin America nation the pope has not visited.
The Vatican is dispatching its foreign minister, French Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, to Havana on Oct. 25, to iron out arrangements for a meeting during a world food summit in Rome next month. Tauran is the highest ranking Vatican official sent to Havana in 22 years.
The pope's public opposition to U.S. economic sanctions is an irritant in U.S.-Vatican relations. John Paul has backed Cuba's Roman Catholic bishops in declaring that the 34-year embargo has contributed to the sufferings of the Cuban people.
Officially, the U.S. mission to the Vatican is refraining from commenting on a possible Cuban visit.
But Americans involved in Cuban policy and Vatican officials do seem to agree on one thing: A papal visit to Cuba will be a double-edged sword for Castro.
While a stopover could be seen as bestowing the pope's blessing on Castro, such a visit could also help galvanize opposition to Castro's nearly 38-year-long rule.
John Paul encouraged the toppling of unpopular communist regimes in eastern Europe. Closer to Cuba, he drew large crowds during a 1983 visit to Nicaragua, when the Central American country was ruled by leftist revolutionaries.
John Paul has joined the Cuban Church's calls for greater freedoms, calling in a message in February for an ``open dialogue with public authorities.'
Castro is among 190 government leaders to be invited to the Nov. 13-17 summit organized by the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
If everything goes according to plan, the pope will address the gathered leaders at the U.N. agency's headquarters, but meet privately with Castro at the Vatican.
Both the Vatican and Castro have suggested several times in recent years that the pope was preparing to visit, but the trip was never made. In 1990, while declaring that a visit was ``practically agreed upon,'' Castro accused the Church of ``anti-revolutionary'' meddling.
A Cuban stop could be conveniently added to a planned October pilgrimage to Brazil.
© Copyright 1996 The Associated Press