By The Associated Press

          HAVANA (AP) -- Wrapping up a rare visit to Cuba by a Republican
          U.S. senator, Arlen Specter on Thursday said he would work to increase
          ties between the United States and the island nation in the areas of public
          health and drug interdiction.

          ``It's important that people like me in the U.S. Senate know what is going
          on in Cuba,'' the Pennsylvania senator said before boarding a U.S.
          military plane back to the United States Thursday afternoon. ``I do see
          hope for improving people-to-people relations.''

          During his two-day visit to the communist country, Specter met for more
          than six-and-a-half hours with President Fidel Castro. Their talk lasted
          into the early morning Thursday.

          Visits to Cuba by Republican senators have been rare because the
          party's leaders have been stalwarts of maintaining the U.S. trade
          embargo against Cuba.

          The senator said they discussed ways the two countries could work
          together to fight drug trafficking and share medical research. He said they
          also talked about the status of four jailed Cuban dissidents, the 1962
          Cuban missile crisis and the Warren Commission's investigation of the
          assassination of President Kennedy.

          Specter served on the commission as a young attorney back in the early
          1960s.

          As for the jailed opposition members, sentenced earlier this year on
          charges of sedition, Specter said he asked about the possibility of parole.

          ``I was told there would be no parole,'' he said. ``That they would have
          to serve out their sentences.''

          The senator also met with Cuban health officials and took a tour of a
          biotechnology firm.

          ``I think that medical exchanges would be appropriate'' between the
          United States and Cuba, Specter said. ``Cuba can benefit from the
          research of the National Institutes of Health and we can benefit from the
          research (the Cubans) are doing on meningitis B, for example.''

          Cuba's research on meningitis B is one of the country's most important
          ongoing biotechnology projects. Cuban researchers in 1989 developed a
          vaccine that the country's officials claim works in protecting 83 percent of
          users from the potentially fatal bacterial infection.

          Specter said he planned to talk with Donna Shalala, the U.S. secretary of
          health and human services, about ways the two countries could work
          together on public health issues.

          As for the fight against drug trafficking, Specter said law enforcement
          efforts shouldn't be held back by politics. ``We should be working much
          more closely with the Cuban government,'' he said.

          Specter called the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba ``a complex
          matter,'' without saying whether he supported or opposed the sanctions.

          But he made clear that he believed the United States should not wait for
          a change in power in Cuba to cultivate nonpolitical exchanges that could
          benefit both countries.

          Castro, at age 73, ``is robust and hale and hearty,'' Specter said. ``He's
          going to be on the scene for many more years.''