Policy: Ex-president suggests that the Bush administration made misleading statements.

By MARK FINEMAN
Times Staff Writer

HAVANA -- Former President Carter challenged conservatives in the U.S. government Monday to prove their charges that Cuba has developed biological
weapons technology and shared it with such renegade states as Iran.

On a five-day visit that marks the first time a current or former U.S. president has set foot in Cuba since Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution, Carter threw himself into the
ideological divide of U.S.-Cuban relations. He met over breakfast with the Communist-run island's two leading dissidents, then delivered a sharp broadside to the
Bush administration over the bioterrorism allegations.

Carter even suggested at a forum that included Castro that Bush administration officials misled either him or the American people about those allegations.

"In preparation for this unprecedented visit, I requested, and we all received, intense briefings from the State Department, the intelligence agencies of my country, and
high officials in the White House ... for them to share with us any concerns that my government had about possible terrorist activities that were supported by Cuba,"
Carter said after more than two hours of briefings by Cuban scientists at the country's premier biotechnology research center.

"There were absolutely no such allegations made or questions raised. I asked them specifically on more than one occasion: 'Is there any evidence that Cuba has been
involved in sharing any information to any other country on Earth that could be used for terrorist purposes? And the answer from our experts on intelligence was,
'No.' "

Just a few days before Carter and his delegation landed in Havana on Sunday, Bush's undersecretary of State for arms control delivered a well-publicized speech to
the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington and asserted, "The United States believes that Cuba has at least a limited offensive biological warfare research
and development effort.

"Cuba has provided dual-use biotechnology to other rogue states," said the official, John R. Bolton.

Carter said Bolton's speech, coming just before the former president's visit, was made "maybe not coincidentally."

En route to Iceland on Monday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell appeared to soften the allegation that Cuba is pursuing a germ weapons program.

"We didn't say that [Cuba] actually had some weapons," Powell said, "but it has the capacity and the capability to conduct such research."

Powell said that Bolton's words were "not a new statement" but one that had been made before.

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice agreed that Bolton's comments were nothing new.

"There is plenty of reason to be very concerned about what the Cubans are doing in this area," she told public television's "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer."

Such weapons are "actually very easy to conceal, and you need multiple measures to make certain that they aren't being developed and transferred," she said.

The bioterrorism charge--and Carter's entire visit--have become the latest battlefields in the deeply polarized and emotional debate about altering America's
42-year-old policy of isolating Cuba.

The anti-Castro Cuban lobbies in South Florida and in Congress have praised Bolton and condemned Carter for a visit they fear could help legitimize the Cuban
leader.

The Heritage Foundation's Latin America specialist, Stephen Johnson, accused Carter of being "the perfect foil" for a move in Congress to ease America's economic
embargo of the Caribbean island.

"The former president has a gullible streak and, like the Sunday school teacher he often resembles, looks for the best in some of the world's worst leaders," Johnson
said in an editorial on the foundation's Web site entitled, "When Jimmy Meets Fidel."

Castro spent hours on state-run Cuban television on the eve of Carter's trip denouncing Bolton as a liar. He and other Cuban officials assert that Bush appointed
Bolton and Assistant Secretary of State Otto J. Reich, the department's point man for Latin America and a longtime Castro foe, to help his brother Gov. Jeb Bush
win Florida's Cuban American vote in his reelection bid this fall.

Associated Press quoted Reich as saying that Carl W. Ford Jr., assistant secretary of State for intelligence and research, had given some of the same information on
the bioterrorism allegations to Congress in March.

In his welcoming statement at the Havana airport Sunday, Castro invited Carter, "together with any specialists of your choosing" to inspect any Cuban facility
suspected of producing biological weapons.

Carter, in his unplanned statement Monday at Cuba's sprawling, ultramodern Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, interpreted the invitation as an offer
to "any person who wanted to come and investigate any allegations concerning this bioterrorism issue."

"My presumption and hope is that anyone who does have evidence of this kind would take advantage of this offer," Carter said.

Carter interrupted a briefing by the center's director, Dr. Luis Herrera, to question him closely on a biotechnology-sharing agreement Cuba has with Iran, where
Cuban scientists are building a biotech plant that will open in a year.

Prior to the scientific briefings, which included information on decades of Cuban research into meningitis vaccines, cloning cows and finding a cure for AIDS, Carter
took a step toward balancing the image of his visit.

He had breakfast in his hotel in a renovated section of Havana's Old City with Cuba's most prominent democracy advocates, Elizardo Sanchez and Oswaldo Paya.

Paya has spent the last year gathering 11,020 signatures on a petition calling for a referendum to establish the rights to free speech and assembly, to institute election
reform and to declare amnesty for Cuba's estimated 250 political prisoners.

Paya's Varela Project, named after a Roman Catholic priest from Cuba, culminated Friday, when he presented the signed petitions to Cuba's National Assembly,
which now must decide the issue.

Political analysts here speculate that Carter, in a further effort to garner credibility for his visit, will endorse the petition drive and call for more freedoms when he
delivers an unprecedented, live televised address to the Cuban nation from Havana University tonight.

"I think Carter's visit will be good for the Cuban people," Paya told reporters after their meeting. "He is a man of dialogue and a man who builds bridges."

Sanchez was more guarded.

"We hope both governments make the most out of this situation at a time when relations couldn't be worse," he said in the Spanish colonial plaza outside Carter's
hotel.

"But I do not hide my skepticism. I'm not expecting a miracle. It all depends on whether they [Cuban officials] listen."

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Times staff writer Paul Richter in Reykjavik, Iceland, contributed to this report.