Spain, Cuba to discuss rights, re-open aid prog

Havana, Apr 4: Spain and Cuba agreed to discuss human rights issues that caused a diplomatic rift with the European Union and relaunch bilateral cooperation programs suspended four years ago.

Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, the most senior EU government official to visit Havana since a 2003 crackdown on dissent, met with acting President Raul Castro at the end of a two-day visit.

The younger Castro has been running Cuba since his brother Fidel Castro underwent stomach surgery in July, raising uncertainty over the future of the one-party Communist state.

''We have opened a new chapter in our relations, based on respect and dialogue,'' Moratinos told reporters after signing agreements with Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque.

Moratinos said he hoped his visit would lead to a thaw in relations between Havana and Brussels.

He said ''nothing has been excluded'' when asked whether the freeing of jailed dissidents would be discussed at a first meeting on human rights scheduled for the end of May.

The Cuban minister, however, insisted that the release of jailed dissidents would not be the agenda. Perez Roque called them ''mercenaries'' paid by Cuba's arch-enemy, the United States, to ''subvert'' the political system born from Castro's leftist revolution in 1959.

''This is not a subject we discuss with other countries. It is an internal matter,'' he said yesterday.

Perez Roque said Cuba has agreed to accept aid from the Spanish government as long as it had no political conditions.

Havana also agreed to renegotiate 1 billion dollar in debt owed to the Spanish government and re-open a Spanish cultural center shut down in 2003, an important issue in Madrid's cultural ties with its former colony.

The EU is split over Cuba. Spain favors constructive engagement as Cuba approaches a post-Castro era. Other EU members want to keep up pressure for political change in Cuba.

Perez Roque said Cuba will not enter political talks with the EU until it tears up its 1996 ''Common Position'' on Cuba, a policy that seeks democracy.

Cuba rejected EU aid in 2003 after European criticism of Havana for suppressing human rights.

The round-up of 75 dissidents and the summary firing-squad execution of three ferry hijackers in 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 at the encouragement of Spain's new Socialist government, but relations remain cool due to EU calls for the release of political prisoners.

There are more than 300 political prisoners in Cuban jails, according to the Cuban Commission for Human Rights, an illegal but tolerated group.

Spanish media has reported that a member of the Spanish delegation will stay on in Cuba to meet with Cuban dissidents after the departure of Moratinos.

''A meeting with dissidents is not enough,'' said one EU diplomat in Havana. ''Cuba must show concrete signs of opening up by releasing a considerable number of jailed opponents.''

Reuters