By ANTHONY BOADLE
  Reuters

  HAVANA - Jimmy Carter said on Friday Cuban President Fidel Castro will not change his country's socialist system despite a dissident petition for more
  political freedom the former U.S. president helped publicize during a landmark visit to the island.

  Carter said at the end of his six-day visit that the trip was unlikely to bring about changes in the one-party Communist state, but at least it gave Cuban
  dissidents a voice for the first time.

  President Castro, 75, bade Carter farewell with a smile at the airport at the end of his six-day visit. Castro was wearing his trademark olive green military
  fatigues, in contrast to the business suit he wore to greet Carter on Sunday.

  Castro told reporters the revolution he began as a bearded guerrilla fighter in the 1950s was not about to disappear.

  "All my life I have believed in changes, changes that look forward not backward," he said. "We are right. We have more confidence. The Revolution is
  stronger than ever."

  Carter said he had long discussions with Castro and his top aides on a dissident petition for a popular vote on internal reforms to extend civic liberties.

  But he said he did not see Castro allowing changes to the socialist system that Cuba holds onto in defiance of a 40-year U.S. trade embargo that
  survived the Cold War.

  "He wants to retain complete control over the system and not take any chance that dissident or disagreeing groups could gain enough support to
  endanger his power as the undisputed leader of the Cuban government," Carter said in an interview with CNN.

  The former president said Castro could make gestures, such as allowing Carter to meet with dissidents freely and have his speech published for Cuba's
  11 million inhabitants to read.

  "But basic policy changes, I don't see any evidence of that," said Carter, the most important American to visit Cuba since Castro seized power in a 1959
  revolution.

  "I don't see any change in the future in his willingness to permit dissident expression from Cubans, although he has been amazingly gracious, I think, in
  letting my views, however critical on occasion, be expressed," Carter, 77, told CNN.

  DISSIDENTS GET LIFT

  Carter met on Thursday with 23 leading dissidents at a United Nations diplomat's home and discussed Cuba's future, peaceful change and the situation
  of the 250 Cubans they say are in jail for political reasons.

  Cuba's small but growing dissident movement got a lift from Carter's speech at Havana University, broadcast live to the nation on Tuesday, when, in the
  presence of Castro, he criticized Cuba one-party state for not allowing freedom of expression or the right to form opposition groups.

  Carter also mentioned the petition for a referendum known as the Varela Project - the first time many Cubans had publicly heard of the dissident
  initiative.

  The dissidents, and Carter himself, were surprised to see the ruling Communist Party newspaper Granma publish Carter's full speech and his replies to
  student's questions on Thursday.

  Carter's critique was unprecedented for a foreign dignitary and so was the publication of his criticism by the media, which are all controlled by the state.

  Backers of the Varela Project have gathered more than 11,000 signatures to petition the National Assembly to hold a referendum - allowed under the
  constitution - on freedom of expression and assembly, the release of political prisoners, freeing up private enterprise and electoral reform to allow a
  general election.

  But Carter said he did not know whether authorities would agree to publish the proposal or even allow open debate about it in the National Assembly,
  which only meets twice a year for a few days and is not scheduled to sit until July.

  "I don't know what will be done," Carter said at a news conference, adding that the Castro government has not decided how to deal with the dissident
  initiative, the first internal challenge of its kind.

  Carter, a critic of the enforcement of U.S. trade sanctions which President Bush is expected to reinforce in a policy speech on Monday, said he did not
  expect his trip could succeed in changing 43 years of "misunderstanding and animosity" between Washington and Havana.

  Carter said Bush's choice of officials "don't indicate any flexibility" - an apparent reference to assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, Otto
  Reich, a Cuban-born member of the hard-line anti-Castro exile community.

  Carter advised the Bush administration not to go ahead with its plans to increase direct funding for the dissident movement in Cuba, saying the
  dissidents themselves do not want to be "stigmatized" as agents of the United States.

  "Not a single one of them said they wanted to be identified in any way with financial assistance from the U.S. government," he told CNN.

  Havana brands the dissidents anti-revolutionary traitors, supported and financed by the United States and wealthy Cuban exiles in Miami bent on
  destroying its socialist system.