KEY POINTS:
President George W Bush on Wednesday branded the Castro government a "disgraced and dying order" and urged Cubans to push for democratic change.
Bush also defended the decades-old policy of stiff US economic sanctions on Havana in his first formal speech on Cuba since an ailing Fidel Castro handed power to his younger brother Raul in July last year.
He rejected any easing of those sanctions without a full transition to democracy and said doing so would only bolster the communist government's grip on power.
Castro, 81, is suffering from an undisclosed intestinal illness and has not been seen in public in 15 months. Many analysts believe that a stable transfer of power to Raul Castro has already taken place and predict that slow, modest changes could occur under his rule.
But Bush, reinforcing the administration's hard-line policy toward Havana, said the handover to Raul Castro amounted to merely "exchanging one dictator for another" and was not acceptable to his administration.
"America will have no part in giving oxygen to a criminal regime victimizing its own people," Bush said in a speech at the State Department, where he appeared with family members of Cuban dissidents. "We will not support the old way with new faces, the old system held together by new chains."
Such harsh rhetoric is popular with Cuban-Americans in Florida, a politically important group. In moves applauded by many Cuban exiles, Bush earlier in his administration tightened already strict economic sanctions on Cuba.
Aides said Bush had been planning the speech for some time and the timing was not tied to any particular event.
In his speech - which did not refer by name to his nemesis Castro - Bush announced some modest additional measures, such as allowing US-based charities to offer internet access to Cuban students and inviting Cuban youths to participate in a scholarship programme.
Bush also called on other nations to support a push for democracy in Cuba and asked aides to work on an international "freedom fund" that could help the country once a transition takes place.
Senator Chris Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat and US presidential candidate, criticised Bush's speech for reiterating a "failed policy" and urged the travel ban be lifted.
"Once again President Bush keeps the United States on the sidelines as the transition to a free Cuba is already under way," Dodd said.
But Bush said Cubans were "restive" for the kind of change that he called a "real revolution" - in contrast to the revolution that brought Castro to power in 1959.
Addressing ordinary Cubans, Bush said, "You have the power to shape your own destiny."
He also appealed to the Cuban military and security forces not to stand in the way of a push for political change.
"When Cubans rise up to demand their liberty, the liberty they deserve, you've got to make a choice: Will you defend a disgraced and dying order by using force against your own people, or will you embrace your people's desire for change?"
It was not clear how many Cubans were able to hear Bush's message.
US-funded Radio Marti, which has broadcast anti-Castro news for two decades, is successfully jammed by Cuba and can only be heard outside Havana. TV Marti is hardly seen at all.
Elsa Morejon, wife of jailed dissident Oscar Elias Biscet, thanked Bush for naming her husband among Cuba's 250 political prisoners.
"They are in prison for exercising their right to express an opinion," she said. "They bear the brunt of the repression in Cuba."
Castro denounced Bush's plans to step up pressure for political change in Cuba in an article published on Tuesday in which he said the US president was a threat to humanity because he could spark a nuclear World War 34.
- REUTERS
