HAVANA (AP) — Ending his landmark trip to Cuba, former US President Jimmy Carter said yesterday he would send the Bush administration a report challenging both countries to change after more than four decades of enmity.

Carter told a news conference he’d like to see co-operation on bioterrorism, and that he would send his impressions today to the White House and the State Department. President George W Bush is scheduled to speak Monday in Miami on American policy toward the communist country.

Carter said he recognises “that after 43 years of misunderstanding and animosity that a brief trip cannot change the basic relationships between our peoples. But my hope is that in some small way at least, our visit might improve that situation in the future.”

Undersecretary of State John Bolton said before Carter’s trip that Cuba has provided biotechnology to “other rogue states” and the United States is concerned the information could support biological warfare programs.

Carter told CNN that he stood by comments saying he had been told by US administration officials that the United States had no evidence the communist country was transferring technology that could be used for terrorism.

“I believe it’s true; that’s what I was told,” he said.

Carter said he presumed that any evidence of Cuba’s involvement in terrorism would be revealed, and noted that Cuba had said it would be open to sending an investigative team to Cuba.

Carter told the news conference that better co-operation would ensure that Cuba’s medical agreements with other nations are monitored to make sure that the ability to produce hepatitis B vaccine or meningitis B vaccine does not lead to this sort of activity for biological weapons.

Bush’s speech in the heart of the Cuban exile community in the United States is expected to announce a hardening of policies toward Cuba, and appears to be a response in part to Carter’s visit.

In the first visit by a serving or former US president since Fidel Castro took power in 1959, Carter urged the communist leader to embrace democracy while calling on the Bush administration to drop the 40 year-old trade embargo against Cuba.

From Cuba’s highest leaders to its most modest citizens, Carter had a reception fit for a pope.

There were chants of “Cahr-TEHR! Cahr-TEHR!” from villagers who lined the unpaved streets of small towns he visited. And for the first time since the 1998 visit of Pope John Paul II, Cuba’s tightly government-controlled media published a long, word-by-word text of a foreign visitor preaching a distinctly noncommunist creed.

Castro honoured Carter by allowing an unusual uncensored speech Tuesday to be broadcast over state radio and television networks, including the assertion that Cuba does not meet international treaty definitions of democracy as well as a call for the end of the US embargo of the island.

Carter told reporters yesterday that the dissidents he met with on Thursday told him a plan to increase US government financing for their efforts could undermine their work by giving the Castro government something it can use to discredit them.

“They thought this would put an undeserved stigma on their actions,” said Carter. He said the dissidents told him “if such a policy was announced that this would in effect prove the false allegation that their dissident actions in the past had been instigated and financed from the United States.”

The Cuban government has tried to discredit a reform referendum known as the Varela Project by saying it was “exported” from the United States. It often accuses dissidents of being on the US government payroll.

Dissidents said Carter urged them to join forces.

Cuba’s divided dissidents are united only by their common opponent: Castro’s government. Some favour a free market, others want a socialism distinct from that of Castro. Some are politicians, others are professionals who found they did not fit into a system run by one party.

Several dissidents organised a petition drive and say they gathered more than 11,000 signatures to seek a national referendum on rights such as free speech, free association and free enterprise. Carter promoted that effort, the Varela Project, during his speech on Tuesday.

Castro loyalists have rejected the project as representing 0.01 per cent of Cuba, and accused the United States of being behind the initiative.

The Bush administration has rejected Carter’s call for an end to the trade embargo against Cuba. Bush is now the 10th president to use the sanctions to try to topple Castro; only Carter moved strongly toward ending them.

Bush in his speech on Monday is likely to announce increased aid to dissidents, promote independent business and try again to overcome Cuban jamming of US government stations.