HAVANA (Reuters) - Actor Jack Nicholson met Cuban President Fidel Castro at the end of a visit to the communist-governed Caribbean island, cinema and media sources said Thursday.
The three-time Oscar winner met the Cuban leader at his Revolution Palace in Havana Wednesday evening, the sources from Cuban cinema and media circles said, without giving more details.
Neither the Cuban government nor the state-run Cuban Film Art and Industry Institute (ICAIC), which hosted Nicholson during his visit, would confirm the meeting took place.
Nicholson, 61, flew out of Havana Thursday after four days on the island. While there, met with leaders in the Cuban film industry, spent an evening at a jazz club and visited a famous cigar factory.
Relaxing with rum and a cigar in a Havana restaurant on Wednesday, Nicholson told reporters Cuba was ``very beautiful, very lovely, a paradise.''
But that attitude was lambasted by U.S. Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Cuban-American Republican from Miami who is a fierce critic of Castro's government.
Diaz-Balart issued a statement Thursday calling Nicholson's actions ``shameful and disgraceful.''
``As a guest of the tyrant, Nicholson is visiting cigar factories, nightclubs and other tourist sites that are off-limits to most Cuban citizens,'' Diaz-Balart said in a statement.
``Nicholson has not been to any of the hundreds of prisons where thousands of political prisoners languish in dungeons or met with any of the thousands of political prisoners or their families.''
Nicholson did not explain the purpose of his visit to Cuba, but when asked what had brought him to the island, he told reporters with a grin: ``Films.''
The 36-year-old U.S. trade embargo on Cuba effectively prevents American citizens from traveling here by including a ban on spending money in the country.
But a number of U.S. celebrities have visited in recent years without repercussions, saying they were ``fully hosted'' and not spending money in Cuba.
Before Castro's 1959 revolution, Cuba was a favorite destination for rich and famous Americans who enjoyed its beaches, night life and casinos.
Most U.S. citizens now visiting the island are of Cuban descent. But others do come, drawn partly by a sense of forbidden fruit due to Washington's sanctions on the island.
19:23 06-25-98
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