Cuba and Spain discuss human rights after normalizing relations

May 31, 2007, 22:43 GMT

Havana - Cuba and Spain broached 'all human rights' issues, including the death penalty, during a high ranking two-day meeting in the Cuban capital this week, according to a joint statement released Thursday.

The talks, which have been criticized by the United States and opposition groups in Spain, marked the first time Cuba has agreed to consider human rights issues with a member of the European Union. Further rounds of talks between the two sides are expected within the year.

The dialogue is part of a series of planned talks agreed after the two countries normalized relations during Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos' visit to Cuba in early April - the first trip to the island by a European minister since the European Union imposed sanctions on Havana in 2003.

The results of the meeting came one day before US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was to visit Spain. Rice has strongly criticized the Spanish government's warming approach to Cuba.

The two sides characterized this week's talks, which ended Wednesday, as an exchange of 'information and opinions' rather than reaching any specific deals or pledges, and said the discussions were held in a 'frank, cordial and constructive' environment.

One item apparently left out of the talks was that of political prisoners being held in Cuba. When Moratinos announced the planned talks in April, he assured that 'not a single question' would be excluded - understood as an affirmation that the political prisoners would be among the topics.

But his Cuban counterpart, Felipe Pérez Roque, immediately denied that political prisoners - characterized as US-backed 'mercenaries' in Cuba - would be a subject of the talks.

The EU in 2003 imposed sanctions on Cuba following the arrest of 75 dissidents and the execution of three men who had hijacked a ferry to flee to the United States.

Thursday's statement did not address political prisoners, but said the sides discussed 'the individual and collective benefits of human rights for everybody, as well as the institutional and judicial framework for the promotion and protection of these rights.'

The delegations, headed by Spain's foreign affairs director Rafael Dezcallar and Cuba's deputy minister of foreign affairs Abelardo Moreno, also discussed 'international cooperation regarding human rights, the death penalty, the respect of human rights in the international war against terrorism.'

Moratinos and the Spanish government weathered a huge wave of criticism following his visit to Cuba, and was also strongly criticized by Cuban dissidents that had sought unsuccessfully to meet with Moratinos in Havana.

On Thursday, much of Cuba's opposition said it remained 'sceptical' of the new dialogue.

The meeting 'has not given any practical results,' the head of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights, Elizardo Sánchez Santa Cruz, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Santa Cruz called the statement 'pure rhetoric,' and warned that Cuba 'might be trying to buy some time by giving false signals about promises that it has no intention to keep.'

But the head of the moderate social-democratic alliance Arco Progresista, Manuel Cuesta Morúa, said the Spanish-Cuban dialogue on human rights could be regarded as a 'successful first step in the high ladder of dialogue.'