Monday January 7 2:01 PM ET

Congressmen Meet Castro, Dissidents in Cuba

By Isabel Garcia-Zarza

HAVANA (Reuters) - President Fidel Castro (news - web sites) held lengthy talks until the early hours Monday with six U.S.
congressmen, discussions that one U.S. lawmaker said ``reflected a new attitude'' between the Cold War enemies, seeking to find
ways to collaborate and reduce the hostile rhetoric.

Most of the congressmen, the latest in a flood of visiting American politicians to Cuba, later met with about a dozen of the island's
leading dissidents, who say they are seeking peaceful changes to Castro's one-party system.

Rep. William Delahunt (news - bio - voting record), a Democrat from Massachusetts, said that during their six-hour meeting in
Havana's Revolution Palace, the Cuban leader, who also entertained two senators last week, was conciliatory.

``The tone reflected a new attitude ... one of less confrontation, and effort to explore ways of collaboration, to put the Cold War
behind us and to lessen the rhetoric,'' Delahunt told reporters after the meeting.

``He (Castro) understands the world has changed,'' he added, saying the conversation touched on the U.S. embargo on Cuba and
the changing international situation, among other subjects.

Washington's potentially controversial plan to hold al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in
Cuba did not come up during the meeting with Castro, Delahunt added.

The two U.S. senators who met with Castro last week said he did not oppose the plan, expected by many to provoke a virulent
response from Havana, which considers this territory ``usurped'' by the United States.

CASTRO LIKES TO CHARM AMERICANS

Most of the congressmen, who are on a fact-finding trip to Cuba, also met with a dozen of the island's leading dissidents.

``It was a very good meeting, we spoke about the opening of a political space,'' Delahunt said of their talks with the dissidents,
whom the Castro government regards as U.S.-backed counter-revolutionaries.

``During the meeting, we spoke widely and frankly of the human rights situation in Cuba and the United States, with special
emphasis on the subject of Cuban prisoners of conscience,'' the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation,
one of the dissident groups that participated, said in a statement afterwards.

It said the dissidents specifically raised the case of Cuba's best-known jailed activist, Vladimiro Roca, who is serving a five-year
sentence for ``inciting sedition.''

Castro, whose government has had no formal diplomatic relations with Washington since soon after the 1959 Cuban revolution,
generally gives a warm welcome to prominent American visitors.

As well as the U.S. legislators, he has also met in recent days with a large group of young American entrepreneurs, and he debated
with hundreds of American students on a visit to Havana at the end of last year.