Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has arrived in Cuba on an unprecedented mission to overcome four decades of enmity between the United States and the communist-run Caribbean island 90 miles off its shore.
Cuban President Fidel Castro, dressed in a dark business suit, met Carter at Havana's airport and praised him for attempting a rapprochement with Cuba during his 1977-1981 presidency despite the distrust that existed at the height of the Cold War.
"It is no secret that for almost a century there have not been optimal relations between our two states," Castro said in welcoming remarks broadcast live by Cuban television, standing before U.S. and Cuban flags fluttering together in the breeze.
"However, in the four years as president you had the courage to make efforts to change the course of those relations," he said.
Carter said he was delighted to return to Cuba for the first time in 47 years and said he wanted to meet with Cubans in all walks of life, including members of human rights groups seeking peaceful reforms to Cuba's one-party state.
Castro said Carter was free to meet with whomever he wanted on the island, including scientists working on biotech programs criticised last week by the U.S. government.
The Bush administration a week ago accused Cuba of developing a biological warfare program and sharing technology with other rogue states, a charge Castro has denied.
On Monday, Carter will tour Cuba's Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, which conducts research that the Bush administration sees as a threat to U.S. national security.
Cuba says its biotechnology and genetic engineering program, one of the most advanced in Latin America, is dedicated only to peaceful purposes and the making of medicines and vaccines sold to many nations.
Carter, a globe-trotting peace broker and advocate of human rights and democracy, will dine twice with Castro and meet leading dissidents on Thursday.
The former president is the most prominent American and the first former president to visit Cuba Castro and his bearded rebels took power in a 1959 revolution.
His visit comes at a time when U.S. policy toward Cuba is hotly debated in Washington, with powerful business interests pushing for the lifting of trade sanctions imposed in 1962 and a lifting of the ban on Americans traveling to the island.
The Bush administration, backed by anti-Castro exiles in Florida, wants to tighten the embargo, seeking the collapse of the economically ruined communist state.
Other politicians, like Carter, oppose isolation and see engagement as the way to foster democratic change in Cuba.
Carter's visit includes an address Tuesday night at the University of Havana that will be broadcast live to the Cuban public, an extremely rare event. The only comparable address by a foreign dignitary was by Pope John Paul II in a 1998 televised homily during a Catholic mass celebrated in Havana's Revolution Square.
Castro, 75, invited Carter, 77, to visit Cuba when they met in Montreal in October 2000 as honorary pallbearers at the funeral of former Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau.