Tampa, Fla. ? President Bush on Friday accused Fidel Castro of taking advantage of U.S. good will in the past to foster child prostitution in Cuba, turning the island nation into what the president called a “major destination” for visitors seeking sex.

“The dictator welcomes sex tourism,” said Bush, who used a speech devoted to the crime of human trafficking to lash into Castro, in an apparent defense of his controversial election-year crackdown on travel to Cuba.

Bush said Castro “bragged about the industry,” quoting him as saying: “Cuba has the cleanest and most educated prostitutes in the world.”

Bush said Castro made the comment “because sex tourism is a vital source of hard currency to keep his corrupt government afloat.”

Castro made the comment in a 1992 address to the Cuban National Assembly, when he spoke about the country’s need for tourism and acknowledged the presence of prostitutes in Cuba, even though prostitution is illegal. His actual words, according to a transcript prepared by the U.S. Foreign Broadcast Information Service, were: “We can say that they are highly educated hookers and quite healthy, because we are the country with the lowest number of AIDS cases.”

Bush’s remarks, coming as he addressed the U.S. Department of Justice’s first-ever national training conference on combatting slavery, seemed design to deflect criticism that his controversial Cuba policy will hurt Cuban families by restricting how often they can see each other.

Instead, Bush argued that easing Cuba travel restrictions in the 1990s led to a spike in child prostitution on the island. Bush sought to link the travel restrictions to what he said was a global strategy to bring an end to slavery, a scourge he called an “affront to the defining promise of our country.”

He suggested the restrictions — enacted after Cuban American Republicans warned that he risked losing community support if he didn’t get tougher on Castro — will not only help tamp down prostitution, but cut off a flow of cash to the island’s leader.

“The regime in Havana, already one of the worst violators of human rights in the world, is adding to its crimes,” he said.