WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Cuba scrambled to offer condolences, blood and
                 airports for diverted airliners after the September 11 attacks on the United
                 States, and provided intelligence to help the United States track the culprits.

                 But the information proved worthless and the Caribbean island will remain on a U.S.
                 list of states that sponsor terrorism, along with Libya, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan and
                 North Korea, a U.S. official said on Wednesday.

                 "We were convinced that it was deliberately of no assistance. Given Cuba's history
                 there could have been more information at their disposal to provide us," a State

                 Department official told Reuters.

                 "There is no inclination in this building or anywhere in the executive branch to
                 consider that Cuba is anywhere near qualified to come off the terrorism list," he
                 said.

                 While a Pentagon report concluded five years ago that Cuba had ceased to be a
                 threat and no longer exported revolution, Washington continues to blacklist Cuba's
                 communist government for harboring two dozen members of the Basque separatist
                 group ETA and maintaining ties with Marxist guerrillas in Colombia.

                 That did not stop the United States from including Cuba in its global appeal for help
                 after militants flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon six
                 months ago.

                 Washington asked countries for intelligence that could help capture and bring to
                 justice those responsible.

                 "Cuba was among them, and the response was positive. There was not radio
                 silence on their part in this issue," the U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

                 But the information provided by President Fidel Castro's government was of no
                 help at all, leading Washington to suspend its contacts with Havana on intelligence
                 sharing, he said.

                 "Cuba was quick to condemn terrorism, but has done nothing to assist in the global
                 effort against terrorism," the State Department official said.

                 'Good guy mode'

                 Castro has surprised Washington twice in three months.

                 In December, in an about face, Cuba purchased $35 million in U.S. food products
                 for cash. Castro had stated he would not buy a single grain of rice while a U.S. ban
                 remained on credit financing for sales allowed under a modified trade embargo.

                 More recently, Castro has refrained from criticizing the U.S. decision to use the
                 American naval base at Guantanamo Bay in eastern Cuba to hold and interrogate
                 prisoners from the war in Afghanistan.

                 The State Department believes Castro's stance is motivated by economic necessity
                 after the devastation caused by Hurricane Michelle in Cuba.

                 In addition, major sources of hard currency in Cuba -- tourism and family
                 remittances from abroad -- were hit by the fear of flying and economic uncertainty
                 caused by September 11.

                 Some analysts say Cuba's economic plight may be the worst since the early 1990s,
                 when the island suffered the impact of the collapse of its ally and benefactor the
                 Soviet Union.

                 The Cuban government, the State Department official said, tends to "go into the
                 good guy mode" shortly before the annual session of the U.N. Human Rights
                 Commission in Geneva, where Castro's rights record has been criticized annually.

                 Havana is also hoping the U.S. Congress will lift the trade credit ban this year, a
                 step backed by a powerful lobby of agribusiness and pharmaceutical firms, and a
                 prohibition on Americans traveling to Cuba to spend dollars.

                 Libraries not baseball

                 But President George W. Bush has made it clear he will not allow further
                 weakening of the 40-year-old embargo against Cuba in the absence of a rapid
                 transition to democracy and a free market economy, U.S. officials said.

                 In its annual global human rights report released on Monday, the U.S. government
                 said Cuba was a "totalitarian state" that continues "to violate systematically the

                 fundamental civil and political rights of its citizens."

                 The White House is looking to expand and retarget the Clinton administration's
                 policy of fostering change in Cuba through people-to-people contacts, which relied
                 on high-profile events such as a Cuba versus Baltimore Orioles baseball game.

                 The new policy is to increase funds for direct channeling to independent libraries
                 and journalists in Cuba, to create alternative sources of information.

                 The programming of Radio Marti, the U.S.-funded station that broadcasts to Cuba,
                 will be changed to focus on what people on the island are interested in rather than
                 satisfy the political view of Cuban exiles in Florida, they said.

                 "All of this is aimed at achieving alternate voices that will contribute to the building
                 of a civil society which will be crucial to any transition," the State official said.