By CAROL ROSENBERG

  Saluting Cuba's centennial, President George W. Bush and an entourage of Cuban American policy makers arrived at Miami International Airport Monday morning at 2:23 p.m.

  Among the greeters was Dr. Alberto Hernandez of the Cuban Liberty Council, which invited the president to the Centennial celebration in a White House meeting on Feb. 4.

  ''We are delighted that the president is coming on a day like today -- a century after Cuban freedom,'' he said.

  The council offered to host the ceremony during that meeting with Gonzalez and Bush political advisor Karl Rove. In the end, the White House rebuffed all exile group offers and decided to stage it themselves.

  ''They have to do it'' Hernandez said. ``After Sept. 11, everything changed.''

  Before the President arrived, a C-17 military cargo plane brought his bullet-proof limousine. Secret Service agents swarmed the tarmac while helicopters swarmed
  overhead in an impressive display of security.

  As the motorcade sped downtown, security measures stopped traffic on the westbound Dolphin Expressway, where people popped out of their cars to wave American flags. But mostly they pulled out their cell phones to report that the President had arrived.

  Bush came to Miami after a Cuban policy announcement at the White House that pledged to keep the economic embargo of Havana. He was in the company of Housing Secretary Mel Martinez, a Cuban American from Orlando; South Florida congress members Lincoln Díaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen; assistant secretary of state for Hemispheric Affairs Otto Reich; and Emilio Gonzalez of the National Security Council, specializing in Latin American and Caribbean Affairs.

  They were met by Gov. Jeb Bush, the president's younger brother, music producer Emilio Estefan, Florida Marlins' President David Sampson and Ft. Lauderdale
  10-year-old Britney Lyn Murphy, a cancer patient being treated at the Chris Everett Children's Hospital. A student at Mirror Lake Elementary in Plantation, she said she never et a president before but had already met Governor Bush.