Cuban dissidents angry after not meeting with Moratinos (Extra)

Apr 4, 2007, 17:51 GMT

Havana - Much of Cuba's dissident community on Wednesday said it was insulted that Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos did not meet with them during a visit to the island this week that saw Spain and Cuba normalize ties.

Oswaldo Paya, leader of the Christian Liberation Movement, was one of a number of dissidents who refused to attend a meeting with another Spanish official scheduled for Wednesday in Havana.

'The behaviour of Spain's government and embassy (...) has adapted to the conditions of exclusion that the Cuban regime imposes in relation to dissidents,' Paya said in a statement. 'We will not subject ourselves to those conditions in relations with Spain, which we find insulting.'

Miriam Leiva, wife of one of the 75 dissidents whose imprisonment in 2003 led the European Union to impse sanctions, said Moratinos had backed out of a promise to meet with them.

'The agreement of the Ladies in White was to meet with the Spanish delegation, but if it has already left and signed everything (with the Cuban authorities) there is nothing to talk about,' she said.

The European Union imposed sanctions on Cuba following the 75 arrests and the execution of three men who had hijacked a ferry to flee to the United States.

Moratinos visited Havana on Monday and Tuesday, meeting with temporary leader Raul Castro and signing an agreement to create 'a bilateral mechanism for political consultations' with his Cuban counterpart Felipe Perez Roque.

Leiva told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that the Spanish government has betrayed the prisoners and all the people repressed since March 2003.

'I think that (the Spanish government) must give us satisfaction, an excuse for this humiliation and these agreements with a government, with a tyranny which totally ignores the violation of human rights,' she said.

Her husband Oscar Espinosa Chepe, one of those arrested in 2003 and later freed for health reasons, agreed.

'There is no doubt that the Spanish government has sought the economic interests of Spanish firms in Cuba,' he said. 'The visit has been to reaffirm (Spain's place) in the Cuban market ahead of a possible change in Cuba, to take up good positions before the changes because they know it is a regime in its terminal phase.'

Other Cuban dissident leaders also made it clear that they would not meet with Spanish authorities because 'there is no point.'

However, Manuel Cuesta Morua, the leader of the group Arco Progresista, said he would be attending the meeting and expressed hope about the bilateral agreement signed by Moratinos and Perez Roque on Tuesday.

'I hope this mechanism opens for the first time a possibility for the broad discussion of the (human rights) issue and that we obtain concrete results for Cuba, because it has been a topic that the Cuban authorities have avoided and it has been a taboo for society,' Cuesta Morua told dpa.

Within Spain, the opposition Partido Popular (PP) accused Moratinos on Wednesday of having travelled to Cuba to 'pay homage' to Castroism, while Cuban dissidents in Spain also criticized the visit.

'They have not gone there to facilitate the transition, to expand liberty, to improve the respect of human rights and the quality of life of citizens, but to pay homage (to the Cuban authorities) as if they were belated lefties,' said Vicente Martinez Pujalte, deputy spokesman for the conservative PP in the lower house of the Spanish Congress.

Martinez Pujalte added that his party will request that Moratinos appear before the legislature to explain his visit to Cuba.