HAVANA, Cuba (AP) --As the current U.S. president moved toward a tougher line in
the 40-year embargo of communist Cuba, former President Jimmy Carter called for
"cooperation, friendship and love" between the two countries.

Carter -- a Bible school teacher back home in Plains, Georgia -- took to the pulpit of
a small Havana church on Wednesday to bear witness to the power of God in his life
and to appeal for understanding between Americans and Cubans.

Speaking in Spanish, Carter referred to St. Paul's second letter to the Corinthians,
saying "the things that are most important of all in life" are "the things that cannot be
seen, that cannot be measured."

"It is not education. It is not electricity in the house, it is not money in the bank," he
told the congregation at Havana's Ebenezer Baptist Church. He urged "justice, peace,
humility, service, compassion. These are very simple things, but the most
important."

In Washington, White House advisers said President Bush would reject pleas by
Carter, farm-state lawmakers and others to lift the trade embargo against Fidel
Castro's Cuba and pledged an even tougher U.S. policy.

They said Bush would try to punish Castro's government while trying to ease
hardships on the Cuban people. That appeared to echo the Clinton administration's
"two-track" policy of aiding dissidents and independent Cuban groups while
punishing its government, as well as efforts by earlier administrations dating back to
the 1960s.

Carter had an official farewell dinner with Castro on Wednesday night, ending the
formal part of a visit that began on Sunday. He had scheduled Thursday afternoon
meetings with dissidents.

The man who served as U.S. president from 1977 to 1981 has questioned the Bush
administration's allegations that Cuba was developing biological weapons. He
challenged Castro to his face to expand democracy -- and then played at baseball
with him in a good-natured Cuban All-Star Game exchange on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, Carter appeared at the Baptist church in west Havana for a meeting
with more than 40 Protestant clergymen from the Cuban Council of Churches. They
gave him a Bible, flowers, a painting and some rousing Spanish-language hymns.

In response, a seemingly weary Carter spoke slowly and solemnly in Spanish,
without notes, of his own faith.

Noting that he had served as president, had been married for 56 years, had four
children and 11 grandchildren, Carter told the congregation: "The most important
thing in my life is my faith in Jesus Christ."

Cuba's Protestant denominations have been growing after losing most of their
pastors to emigration immediately after the 1959 revolution led by Castro.

While local Communist Party functionaries sometimes clash with new charismatic or
Pentecostal churches that bubble up without official permission, Ebenezer's pastor,
the Rev. Raul Suarez, said that 1,176 once-illegal congregations have been legalized
in recent years as the government has shifted from open hostility to a wary tolerance
of religious organizations.

Suarez himself is a noncommunist member of Cuba's National Assembly, or
parliament, and his congregation on Wednesday included National Assembly
President Ricardo Alarcon, long the chief adviser to Castro on U.S. affairs, who was
accompanying Carter.

Earlier in the day, Carter toured facilities for addicts, for special-needs children, a
housing project, a school and a family medical clinic -- the sorts of programs that
Castro's government is most proud of.

Hundreds of Cubans lined the main street in the little town of Frank Pais south of
Havana to greet the former American president with chants of "Car-TER! Car-TER!"

The town school asked him to ceremonially plant a tree. Instead of tossing a quick
spadeful of dirt, Carter and his wife Rosalynn set to work, each dumping seven or
eight healthy shovelfuls of earth for the small Washington palm as worried hosts
increasingly called, "Enough! Enough!"

The night before, Carter told Cubans during a live television broadcast that their
country does not meet international standards of democracy and repeatedly
promoted a grass-roots campaign for greater civil liberties. (Full story)

Cuban newspapers on Wednesday underscored Carter's criticisms of Washington's
policies toward Havana, as well as his call for an end to the U.S. embargo of Cuba,
but they did not mention Carter's references to a lack of liberties.

Democracy, Carter told viewers, "is based on some simple premises: All citizens are
born with the right to choose their own leaders, to define their own destiny, to speak
freely, to organize political parties, trade unions and nongovernmental groups and to
have fair and open trials."

 Copyright 2002 The Associated Press.