BY WARREN P. STROBEL
Knight Ridder News Service

WASHINGTON - Seeking to contain a minor political storm over his recent remarks on Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday that Castro has ''never stopped being a troublemaker'' in Latin America and that the region will be better off when he's gone.

Powell spoke in an interview with Knight Ridder a day after Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry seized on earlier remarks in which the Powell suggested that Castro was a problem for Cubans, but not for the rest of the Western Hemisphere.

Traveling to Brazil on Monday, Powell was asked about complaints in Latin America that the United States views the region's problems through the lens of Cuba.

''We don't see everything through the lens of Fidel Castro,'' Powell said. ``Castro is a problem for the Cuban people. I don't view him as that much of a problem for the rest of the hemisphere, certainly not the way he was when I was [President Reagan's] national security advisor 15 years ago.''

Kerry then said in a statement that it's ``shocking that the Bush administration is telling the world that Fidel Castro no longer poses a problem for this hemisphere.''

In the interview, Powell suggested his remarks had been twisted. He said his point was that Cuba doesn't present the same sort of regional threat it did when Castro had the military and political backing of the Soviet Union.

''Castro is an anachronism. He is causing his own people to suffer greatly. He is a troublemaker in the rest of the region. He is a troublemaker in Venezuela. He's a troublemaker in Colombia. He's never stopped being a troublemaker. But he is not the kind of threat he was when he had the Soviet Union backing him,'' he said.