Mexican ambassador returns to Cuba after Castro apologizes
                  
                  MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Mexico has returned its ambassador to
                  Cuba, declaring an end to a controversy over Cuban President
                  Fidel Castro's seeming criticism of Mexican policies.

                  The spat "is totally overcome for the government of Mexico," Ambassador
                  Pedro Joaquin Coldwell said on return to Havana on Saturday, according to
                  the Mexican government's Notimex news agency.

                  Mexico withdrew Joaquin Coldwell on December 4, two days after Castro
                  seemed to criticize Mexico's free trade pact with the United States and
                  suggested that Mexican youth knew more about Mickey Mouse than about
                  their national heroes.

                  It was an unprecedented, if relatively minor diplomatic row between Cuba
                  and one of its best friends. Mexico is the only Latin American nation which
                  never broke ties with Cuba under U.S. pressure in the 1960s.

                  On Friday, Castro sent Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina to Mexico City
                  with a public letter expressing love for Mexico and apologizing if his
                  comments had given offense.

                  Cuban leader 'loves, admires Mexico'

                  Cuban independence hero Jose Marti "taught us to love Mexico, the country
                  I love and admire more than any other," Castro said in the letter.

                  Castro wrote that if "one single Mexican feels offended by my words, I have
                  no objection at all to apologizing."

                  But he insisted that "at no moment did the idea or plan to offend or injure
                  Mexico pass through my mind."

                  "This message erases any doubt that their might have been about the feelings
                  of the president of Cuba toward Mexico," Joaquin Coldwell said in Havana.

                  Castro said his comments were taken out of context due to "bad
                  information, bad interpretation or bad intention" and said his spoken
                  comments did not convey his meaning when they were written.

                  He said that he was speaking informally and in jest to an intimate audience of
                  friends when he suggested that in joining the OECD, Mexicans might "leave
                  us in the town of misery and move into an aristocratic neighborhood."

                  Castro lauded Cuban-Mexican relations dating back to the Spanish
                  conquest of the Americas and including his own exile in Mexico, from which
                  he launched his revolutionary return to Cuba.

                  He also criticized U.S. policies toward Latin America.

                  "In a globalized and ever-more economically integrated world, it is criminal
                  that men, women and children die because they are forbidden the same
                  freedom of movement" granted to capital and merchandise, Castro said in
                  his letter, alluding to Mexico's free trade agreement with the United States.

                  Mexicans and Mickey Mouse

                  Castro defended his criticism of the U.S. "cultural invasion" of Latin
                  America, saying he meant to "defend all the children of the hemisphere"
                  when he suggested that many know more about Mickey Mouse than their
                  own national heroes.

                  He called U.S. cultural influence "the nuclear weapon of the 21st century for
                  dominion of the world."

                  He said the U.S. attack on Iraq shows "the world order established by a
                  very close neighbor shared by Mexico as well as Cuba."

                  "At such a moment is it worth it to speak of real or simply imaginary
                  differences between Mexicans and Cubans?" he asked.

                     Copyright 1998   The Associated Press.