Spain breaks ice with Cuba

Spain breaks ice with Cuba
April 3, 2007 - 6:42AM

Spain's foreign minister made an ice-breaking visit to Cuba on Monday,
the most senior European Union government official to go to the island
since a 2003 dispute over dissident arrests.

Miguel Angel Moratinos said his official trip marked a new stage in
re-opening talks with Cuba, and hoped it would help thaw Cuba's
relations with the EU.

"It's absolutely unthinkable that Spain, the Spanish government, cannot
maintain, defend and develop an intense, constructive and communicative
policy with the Cuban authorities," Moratinos told reporters in Havana.

On Tuesday he will meet President Raul Castro, who took over in July
after 80-year-old revolutionary leader Fidel Castro underwent emergency
stomach surgery.

A crackdown on dissent in March 2003 prompted the EU to shun high-level
talks with Cuba and invite dissidents to events at European embassies in
Havana, upsetting the Cuban government and leading to a freeze in ties.

Lower-level meetings resumed in 2005, but relations between Brussels and
Havana remain cool due to EU calls for the release of political
prisoners, including the 75 detained and sentenced in 2003. Cuba has
refused EU aid since 2003.

Moratinos is the most senior minister from an EU nation to visit Cuba
since then.

Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque met him and said the EU should
treat Cuba with the same respect that Cuba showed it. He said he was
confident of an improvement.

"In these relations, Spain plays an irreplaceable role and it is, today,
within the European Union, a privileged negotiator," Perez Roque said
after meeting with Moratinos.

"We recognise this government's authority to talk to us on a basis of
perfect equality, including on the most complex issues," he said.

Fidel Castro has yet to reappear in public since handing day-to-day
power to his younger brother and defence minister, Raul Castro.

But officials say he has recovered enough to take a more active role in
running the country and there is speculation he could appear at an April
28 regional trade meeting in Cuba.

Moratinos' official visit, the first by a Spanish foreign minister in
nine years, comes shortly after Perez Roque visited several EU
countries. Spanish media has reported that a diplomat in Spain's
delegation could meet Cuban dissidents later this week.

Spain is one of Cuba's biggest foreign investors and trade partners
after Venezuela and China.

EU trade with Cuba totalled about 2 billion euro ($A3.3 billion) in 2005.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/spain-breaks-ice-with-cuba/2007/04/03/1175366193467.html