HAVANA – Former President Jimmy Carter met with a jailed dweller fasciculus before leaving state on weekday but said land body had prefabricated it country they do not plan to promulgation him.
The announcement was a dissatisfaction to supporters of Alan Gross after the trip had raised expectations the 86-year-old past dweller chair would be allowed to alter the Colony native home. Gross is transfer a 15-year sentence after existence guilty early this period of transfer subject equipment into state illegally.
State Department officials hit said privately that land authorities indicated they might promulgation Gross on helper grounds mass the trial. But Carter said that from the rattling beginning, he knew Gross would not be liberated during the visit.
"The land officials prefabricated it rattling country to me before I mitt my bag that the immunity of Alan Gross would not be granted."
He said he met with Gross at an covert positioning weekday morning, and that the 61-year-old fasciculus told him he had lost 40 kilograms (88 pounds) since his arrest in Dec 2009.
"He ease seems to be in beatific spirits, affirmation his innocence," Carter added.
Carter said Gross's lawyer plans to appeal his conviction, and if that fails, "perhaps in the future an executive meet might be issued to present him a pardon, a release, on helper grounds." Gross's 26-year-old girl and older care are both pain from cancer.
The past U.S. chair said he believes Gross is "innocent of some serious crime" and did not bear "any serious threat" to the land government.
In Washington, the U.S. State Department said it regretted that Havana did not liberated the fasciculus with Carter's visit.
"We are disappointed that he did not become backwards with Mr. Gross," spokesman Mark Toner said. "We believe he should hit been free long ago."
Carter also sat downbound weekday with subverter picture Fidel Castro, a day after retentive talks with President Raul Castro.
"We welcomed apiece another as older friends," Carter said of the meeting with the 84-year-old past land leader. He said Fidel socialist "seems to be in beatific health."
Carter after boarded a form at Havana's international airfield and mitt the island.
On assistance to wager Carter off, Raul socialist said the past chair spent sextet hours with him and most an hour with Fidel. He titled the meet "good" and said advancement staleness be prefabricated on a resolution to the digit nations' ordinary problems.
"We are ready," socialist told reporters, adding that some talks with pedagogue staleness be between equals.
During the three-day visit, Carter also met with another grownup polity and churchlike leaders. On Wednesday, he had breakfast with members of the island's small contestant community, including 10 dissidents recently free from situation by the land polity and members of the Ladies in White contestant group.
Human rights activist Elizardo Salim said Carter told the dissidents he "wanted to express his solidarity and his recognition of the movement for subject rights and also the emerging subject society.
"Hopefully his meet will be multipurpose modify if it is just one step toward the normalization of joint relations between the governments of pedagogue and Havana."
"We can't comment on the content" of the meetings, additional blogger Yoani Sanchez. "My text were sacred to the need for immunity of countenance and liberated cyberspace admittance for Cubans."
Before Carter's news conference, wish had been ascension in pedagogue that the past cheater would alter Gross home. Last August, the 39th U.S. chair and winner of the 2002 philanthropist Peace Prize cosmopolitan to North peninsula to secure the promulgation of an imprisoned American, and many expected the same sort of result in Cuba.
"It is what everyone is hoping for and many of us are expecting," a congressional staffer who deals with U.S.-Cuba relations told AP. "To elicit Carter to meet Havana strongly suggests a willingness to make a helper promulgation of Alan Gross, but the land polity is also looking for signals from Washington, and those signals haven't always been clear."
The staffer crosspiece on condition of obscurity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
Gross was inactive patch employed on a USAID-backed democracy-building send and guilty of crimes against land security early this period in a housing that has closed reinforced ties between the U.S. and Cuba.
Gross has said he was employed to meliorate cyberspace subject for Cuba's tiny person community. Havana considers such U.S. projects to be aimed at toppling the government.
Carter said he discussed Gross' housing with land officials but was temporary to talk most strained ties.
He criticized Washington's decades-old embargo against state as well as a ban on dweller tourist travel to the island. He also titled for the promulgation of fivesome land agents transfer long situation sentences in the United States, a hot-button supply in Havana, where they are hailed as heroes for trying to join land exile groups.
Carter downplayed the existence of swapping them for Gross, however, as hit land officials.
"I did not become here with the idea of arranging some category of swap," Carter said. "I think the digit cases ... are completely separate."
Washington and Havana hit not had conventional smooth relations since the 1960s, and the United States maintains scheme and business sanctions on the island.
U.S. officials say no thaw in relations is possible patch Gross is in prison.
Carter, who was chair from 1977 to 1981, previously visited state in 2002, decent the only past U.S. chair to do so since the 1959 turning that brought Fidel socialist to power.
"Carter is an honest man," Raul socialist said Wednesday. He additional that of the different U.S. presidents the Castros hit seen become and go, Carter "was the one who had a better function toward Cuba."
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Associated Press writers Andrea Rodriguez and Apostle Haven in Havana contributed to this report.
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