By TIM JOHNSON

  WASHINGTON - President Bush marked Cuban independence on Tuesday with a radio address denouncing Fidel Castro and a private meeting with former political prisoners, low-key events that reflected White House concern that U.S. policy on Cuba is displeasing growing numbers of people.

  In a brief statement, Bush said: ``My hope is for the Cuban people to soon enjoy the same freedoms and rights as we do. Dictatorship has no place in the Americas.''

  Radio Martí, the government-operated station that beams to Cuba, broadcast the full 40-second statement in Spanish in the morning.

  At mid-afternoon at the White House, Bush met in the Roosevelt Room with 11 Cuban activists, one-time political prisoners and relatives of prisoners. The meeting was
  closed.

  In a sign of growing strains over Cuba policy, three Cuban-American Republican legislators from South Florida who favor sharply stepped up pressure on the Castro regime issued a tepid statement of support for the White House but stayed away from the meeting.

  The small meeting contrasted with last year's events marking Cuban independence day, in which Bush laid out a series of initiatives aimed at coaxing Cuba's one-party regime to take steps toward politicial pluralism. Bush hosted a huge open meeting at the White House, then flew to Miami for a rally, in which he pledged to maintain pressure on the Castro regime.

  In the past two months, Castro has carried out the most brutal repression of any in Latin America in the past decade, jailing 75 dissidents and democracy activists and executing three disaffected Afro-Cuban youths who attempted to hijack a ferry.

  The only other Cuban American in Congress, Rep. Bob Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, blasted Bush for what he called the president's ''dismal record'' on Cuba.

  ''Your policy has not differed one iota from the Clinton policy,'' Menendez said. ``Shame on you for not living up to your promises.''

  Menendez said Bush has failed to enforce provisions of the Helms-Burton law to punish foreign investors in Cuba and declined to make Radio and TV Martí more effective in overcoming Cuban jamming.

  Two liberal groups, the Washington Office on Latin America and Amnesty International, called on the White House to reconsider the U.S. embargo of Cuba.

  ''The 40 plus years of the embargo have not contributed to the betterment of human rights in Cuba and . . . [it] provides the Cuban authorities with a convenient
  justification for repressive measures,'' Amnesty International said in a letter to the White House.

  A Republican legislator from Nevada, Sen. John Ensign, said in a speech to the Cuban American National Foundation in Miami that the White House must maintain the embargo of Cuba.

  ''I look at Cuba today and see a lot of European and Canadian businesses that have been operating there for years -- making a tidy profit at the expense of the Cuban people -- yet Cuba has not been transformed, and Castro has not changed one iota,'' Ensign said.

  The lawmaker said he would introduce a bill that would provide $30 million to finance a transition government for Cuba, and another $20 million for human rights activities through the Organization of American States and for dissidents, activists, relatives of prisoners and others seeking to build civil society.