HAVANA -- Cuba's government denounced new U.S. recommendations aimed at undermining island's leadership succession system, and said they would further separate Cubans from relatives in the United States.

A government statement published by the Communist Party daily Granma ridiculed the recommendations of a U.S. presidential commission, which also called for further restricting money going to Cuba.

President Fidel Castro is expected at some point to hand power to his younger brother Raul. The commission said that such a transfer of power "constitutes a flagrant violation of the human rights of 11 million Cubans."

The commission, headed by Secretary of State Colin Powell, recommended measures "to focus pressure and attention on the ruling elite so that a succession by this elite or any one of its individuals is seen as what it would be: an impediment to a democratic and free Cuba."

In the typically strident tone of Cuban statements about U.S. government policies, it criticized the report as an invasion into Cuba's internal affairs, labeling it a "maniacal and crazed transition program for Cuba."

It said that if the recommendations were carried out, they would be "a violation of the rights of citizens of Cuban origin in the United States" by restricting their ability to visit and aid family members.

The Cuban statement said Cuba-U.S. visits by relatives would be restricted, as would the shipment of funds to relaltives.

While Cuba has recently changed rules to make family visits easier, the Cuban report said, "the government of the United States is multiplying obstacles" by limiting family visits to one every three years instead of once a year.

Arriving on a flight from Miami at Havana's international airport, Gladys Ruiz and her relatives embraced in reunion, weeping as they kissed one another repeatedly.

"I have my children here. I can't wait three years," she said.

"Politics shouldn't be mixed with families," said Carmen Brito, a 56-year-old Cuban waiting at the airport to greet her 77-year-old mother from Miami.

With aging parents, "how am I going to wait so much time?" she asked.

The Cuban government statement called the recommendations to reduce the amount of money that visitors can spend to $50 from $164 a day "a new and arbitrary discrimination against the Cuban community in the United States."

The United States has restricted trade and travel to Cuba for most of the time since the early 1960s in an attempt to topple Castro's government.

Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press