HAVANA, (Reuters):
CUBA ENDED a diplomatic deadlock with eight European Union nations yesterday in response to proposals by European Union (EU) officials to stop inviting dissidents to National Day receptions in Havana.
Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said Cuba was reopening official contacts with the embassies of France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Austria, Greece, Portugal and Sweden.
EU embassies began inviting political opponents to the diplomatic cocktail parties last year to protest a crackdown on dissent in March 2003 and other human rights violations in Cuba.
The practice so incensed President Fidel Castro's communist government that it shut its doors to European diplomats, shunned ambassadors and did not return telephone calls.
After Cuba freed 14 of the 75 jailed dissidents, EU working group on Latin America recommended on December 14 that the policy be dropped in favour of more discrete contacts with the dissidents.
"As a result of the decision by the EU's Latin American committee to renounce invitations to national day celebrations of mercenaries paid and directed by the United States, Cuba has decided to restore official contacts with the embassies of a group of EU countries," Perez Roque told reporters.
NORMALISING RELATIONS
Cuba had already restored contacts with Hungary and Spain, whose socialist government called for the policy review to end the deadlock with its former colony, while Belgium avoided the diplomatic freeze by not inviting dissidents to its receptions.
Still on Cuba's blacklist among the EU countries with embassies in Havana are the Netherlands, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, which have opposed a softening in policy until Cuba releases all political prisoners.
EU foreign ministers are expected to decide later this month whether to scrap or scale down the national day celebrations by not inviting Cuban authorities or dissidents.
The policy change would also restore high-level visits by European officials to Cuba that were halted in June 2003.
European diplomats welcome the Cuban announcement as a positive step toward normalising relations between Cuba and the European Union, the island's main trade and investment partner.
To allay any impression of a climbdown, the EU will continue to press for the release of all political detainees and intensify contacts with dissidents and civil society, EU officials said.
The move to mend relations between Cuba and Europe comes at a time of increased tensions between Havana and Washington.
The Bush administration last year stepped up its economic embargo against Cuba, restricting visits by Cuban émigrés to their families. Havana responded by barring the use of the U.S. dollar in Cuba.
