Former US president Mr Jimmy Carter last night called on Cuba's one-party communist state to allow a popular vote on internal reform in a speech delivered in the presence of President Fidel Castro.
"Cuba has adopted a socialist government which does not permit its people to organise any type of opposition movement," Mr Carter said in the address to students at Havana University.
"Its [Cuba's] constitution recognizes the right of freedom of expression and of association, but other laws deny these freedoms to those who do not agree with the government," he said.
Mr Carter said Cuba's constitution allowed for a referendum on internal reforms and urged publication by the state-run media of the Varela Project, a proposal by dissidents who have gathered over 11,000 signatures to petition for a plebiscite on peaceful change.
Mr Carter, the most prominent American to visit the island since Castro's 1959 revolution, also urged the US Congress to lift a trade embargo that the United States has imposed on Cuba for 40 years to allow normal relations between the two Cold War foes.
His comments, read in halting but understandable Spanish, were broadcast on Cuba's state-run television and radio and were heard by exiles in Miami, where a Hispanic television network broadcast the speech.