President Fidel Castro of Cuba and his Russian counterpart, Mr Vladimir Putin, started talks yesterday in Havana as Moscow sought to rekindle political and economic ties with its former Cold War ally.
Dr Castro met Mr Putin at Havana airport late on Wednesday. Yesterday's programme included a visit to a Russian operated electronic intelligence centre outside the capital.
Russian officials said Mr Putin e Marti international airport, and personally invited the Cuban communist leader to make a future visit to Moscow.
The last major visit to Cuba from Moscow was by the then Soviet leader, Mr Mikhail Gorbachev, in 1989. He received an effusive bearhug from Dr Castro rather than the businesslike handshake he gave Mr Putin on arrival. Underlining the importance Cuba is giving to this visit, Dr Castro's brother and armed forces' chief, Gen Raul Castro, as well as other senior officials such as the Foreign Minister, Mr Felipe Perez Roque, were at the airport to greet Mr Putin.
The Soviet Union became Cuba's strategic partner shortly after Dr Castro came to power in his 1959 revolution that toppled the former dictator, Fulgencio Batista. But relations loosened dramatically after the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991, and Cuba, now one of the world's few bastions of communism, has since formed important commercial ties with other countries.
Mr Putin made no comments to waiting media on his arrival but had said in an interview with Cuban television on Monday that the cooling in post-Soviet relations with Cuba had been a mistake and that the ties should be strengthened.
His visit to Cuba may raise eyebrows in the United States, particularly following earlier rapprochement with others mistrusted by the West, such as Libya, Iraq and North Korea.
Meanwhile, the convicted US spy, Edmond Pope, was freed yesterday from a Moscow jail after President Putin pardoned him.
Pope (54), who suffers from a rare form of bone cancer, headed straight for Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport and flew out of Russia aboard a US plane bound for the American military base at Ramstein in western Germany.
He went immediately to the Landstuhl medical centre, near the base.
The retired US naval intelligence officer would be debriefed in Germany by US security experts and would also receive urgent medical treatment before flying back to the United States, diplomatic sources said.
President Clinton, who telephoned Mr Putin last weekend urging him to pardon Pope, hailed the Russian leader's act of clemency yesterday in freeing the sick businessman.
"I welcome today's release of Edmond Pope after eight months of detention in Russia and appreciate President Putin's decision to pardon Mr Pope," Mr Clinton said in a statement issued by White House officials in London.