Castro, Left Out in the Cold, Jabs at U.S. : Caribbean: Cuban leader uses Colombia speech to criticize Washington. He resents not being invited to planned summit in Miami.

Cuban President Fidel Castro uncorked some vintage invective against the United States on Tuesday for excluding him from a hemispheric summit scheduled for December in Miami.

His nation, Castro said, “is now being prohibited by the assumed owners of the hemisphere from participating in that meeting. How much political misery, cowardice and mediocrity is reflected, really, by that exclusion!”

Castro spoke here at the fourth Ibero-American Summit, an annual meeting of government leaders from Latin America, Spain and Portugal. Speeches by other leaders emphasized such themes as democratic development, economic growth and social progress.

But Castro seemed preoccupied with the United States and the planned Miami summit.

“Our powerful northern neighbor” is convening the session “with the alleged purpose of establishing a mature, hemispheric association,” he said. He recalled that similar projects have come and gone--such as President John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress and President George Bush’s Initiative for the Americas. “No one remembers them,” he said.

“Decade after decade, century after century, we have been going from slogan to slogan, from deceit to deceit,” Castro added. “There have also been wars, interventions and territorial conquests at the expense of our America. What, then, can we expect from that invariably expansionist, selfish and hegemonic force?”

Still, he said he welcomes the Miami summit as an opportunity for Latin American and Caribbean nations to defend their interests. And in a conciliatory gesture to President Clinton, Castro said Cuba “is pleased that the current U.S. Administration does not promote, as others did, bloody military dictatorships subordinated to the American interests.”

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He gave Washington credit in some other areas, including U.S. support, “at least in rhetoric,” for economic reforms aimed at relieving social problems in the region.

But the speech bristled with criticism of the United States and calls for changes in Washington’s policy toward Latin America. Castro, for example, demanded that all Latin American emigrants to the United States receive the same welcome given to Cubans fleeing his Communist regime.

“The United States must change its immigration policy with regard to Latin America and the Caribbean, and pass a law that would automatically legalize the situation of those countries’ citizens entering the United States, as it does in the case of Cubans,” he said. “Now that the Berlin Wall no longer exists, the wall being built on the Mexican-American border should be torn down.”

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Castro’s concentration on U.S. policy seemed to be a defiant but indirect response to criticism of his Communist political system by U.S. officials and some Latin American leaders. In past Ibero-American summits, some presidents have urged Castro to start a transition to democracy, and they did so again Tuesday.

President Rafael Caldera of Venezuela said now is the time for democratic reform in Cuba. President Carlos Saul Menem of Argentina, addressing “the commander of Cuba,” also spoke of “the need for a change” on the island.

In what may have been a symbolic concession, onetime guerrilla Castro wore a white guayabera shirt instead of his customary military uniform to the two-day summit’s opening session.