RUTHFULLY YOURS

Visiting former US president Jimmy Carter met with Cuba’s President Raul Castro seeking to ease strained bilateral ties frayed further by Havana’s imprisonment of an American contractor.Though not an official US envoy, Carter is the most important US official to meet with Cuba’s communist leadership in its almost five-decade rule.

Weak US-Cuban ties have had little chance for progress with the latest case souring any potential for change between the next door neighbors and Cold War foes for over a year.

Carter, who arrived in Cuba Monday on what was described as a “private” visit at the invitation of Cuba’s communist government, said he did speak “with some officials” about the case of Alan Gross, the US State Department contractor being held by Havana.

But he added, “I am not here to take him out of the country.”

“I am here to meet Cubans, those of the government as well as ordinary citizens,” Carter told journalists in Spanish after visiting a former convent transformed into a retirement center.

“It is a great pleasure for me to return to Havana. I hope I can contribute to improving relations between our two countries.

Carter, 86, and his wife Rosalynn later met at the imposing stone Palace of the Revolution with the Cuban president, 79, calling it “an honor” to discuss what Havana said included bilateral ties and centrally-planned Cuba’s tentative economic reforms, such as allowing broader self-employment.

Castro “reaffirmed Cuba’s willingness to discuss anything with the US government, as long as it is on equal terms, unconditional and with full respect for our independence and sovereignty,” the Cuban state news said.

Dissident members said the former US leader would meet early Wednesday with award-winning dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez and other members of the opposition including Sakharov prize recipient Oswaldo Paya and Elizardo Sanchez, head of a main opposition group that is tolerated by the government.

US diplomats have said that even though Carter is not an official envoy, they hoped he would intercede in the case of Gross, a State Department contractor serving a 15-year jail term.

Gross was sentenced by a Cuban court earlier this month after being convicted, following a brief trial, of “acts against the independence or territorial integrity” of Cuba.

Carter, who also visited Cuba in 2002, at the time broke ground by speaking on official state television about a dissident initiative seeking political and economic opening from within the Americas’ only one-party communist system. The initiative, however, did not move forward in Cuba’s National Assembly.

Gross, 61, was arrested in December 2009 for delivering laptops and communications devices to Cuba’s small Jewish community.