Havana - Cuba on Thursday dismissed a speech by US President George W Bush on the situation in the communist nation, calling his remarks a "decadent show" and "irrelevant."

Bush's speech on Wednesday to mark a "day of solidarity" with the Cuban people on the week of the 106th anniversary of the island's independence was a "decadent show, an irrelevant and cynical speech, a ridiculous act of propaganda and bad taste," Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said in a press conference in Havana.

Bush said Americans would be allowed to send cellular phones to Cuba in the near future as a way of testing reforms under the new government.

But he said the reforms under Cuban leader Raul Castro to allow greater access to technology must be accompanied by real democratic and economic change to improve life on the communist island.

Bush dismissed recent reform measures as token gestures that are unaffordable for most Cubans and do little to end decades of repression by the near half-century regime of Fidel Castro.

"Its recent gestures appear to be nothing more than a cruel joke perpetuated on a long-suffering people," Bush said. (dpa)