Sinn FΘin president, Mr Gerry Adams, has called on rich countries to cancel Third World debt and criticised the US embargo on Cuba.
Mr Adams, on the last day of his visit to Cuba, told the Cuban Institute for Friendship between Peoples: "It is wrong that the Third World should be crippled with debt while the First World is affluent."
He said: "The policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have locked South American and Caribbean nations into a vicious cycle of borrowing, and repayment of loans and interest on loans, that can never be paid. In a world of increasing wealth, a world growing smaller with technology and communications and ever faster transport, it is wrong, it is outrageous, it is heartbreaking that each week 134,000 children die from starvation or avoidable diseases." Mr Adams also spoke against the embargo imposed more than four decades ago to isolate President Fidel Castro.
The visit has drawn criticism from the US ambassador to London. While in Belfast on Tuesday, Ambassador William Farish said the visit was unhelpful.
"You combine Colombia and September 11th and now the visit to Cuba, it certainly isn't a positive thing," he said.