HAVANA - Cuba rolled out a pair of rare goodwill gestures toward the United States Monday and underscored its desire to hammer out bilateral accords on fighting terrorism, migrant smuggling and drug trafficking.

Amid speculation that President Fidel Castro might speak this week at a UN-sponsored conference in Mexico on fighting poverty, which U.S. President George W. Bush is also due to attend, the foreign ministry announced that Cuba has handed over a fugitive from the United States to the U.S. government.

The neighboring nations do not maintain full diplomatic relations and do not have an extradition treaty.

But the Cuban government said Jesse James Bell, who stands accused of 15 drug charges and had been detained in Cuba since October 10, 2001, was handed over on January 12 "as a goodwill gesture that shows clearly the commitment of our government to cooperate with all nations in fighting drug trafficking," the foreign ministry text said.

The United States requested Bell's extradition October 19, 2001 and "Cuba decided to respond positively to this request after establishing clearly that he was not involved in illegal activity in this country," the statement added.

With a four decade-old U.S. economic embargo clamped on Havana, the only communist government in the Americas, cooperation in fighting drug trafficking has appeared to be one of the few areas in which bilateral contacts and cooperation with the United States might have a chance for improvement.

Yet Cuba's efforts to step up cooperation in the fight against drug trafficking so far have met little enthusiasm from Bush's government.

"The handover of this individual to the DEA (U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration) was done exceptionally, since despite the expressed desire and proposals from the Cuban side, there is no cooperation agreement between the governments of Cuba and the United States of America on fighting drug trafficking, and as such our government had no obligation to hand over the aforementioned delinquent," the Cuban statement said.

In a separate drugs-related development, the foreign ministry also announced Monday that Cuba had detained in Havana Colombian national Rafael Miguel Bustamante Bolanos, who is wanted by authorities in his country and in the United States.

Bustamante has fled from prisons in Santa Marta, Colombia and a federal facility in the U.S. state of Alabama, the ministry statement added.

In November 2001 Havana presented to the United States proposals for an accord to combat illegal emigration and emigrant smuggling, an anti-drugs cooperation agreement and an anti-terrorism cooperation arrangement.