CUBA: Cuba ended a diplomatic deadlock with eight European Union nations yesterday in response to proposals by EU officials to stop inviting dissidents to national day receptions in Havana.
Cuban Foreign Minister, Mr 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 at 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, an EU working group on Latin America recommended on December 14th that the policy be dropped in favour of more discrete contacts with the dissidents.
Cuba had already restored contacts with Hungary and Spain, whose Socialist government called for the policy review to end the deadlock, while Belgium avoided the diplomatic freeze by not inviting dissidents to its receptions. Still on Cuba's blacklist 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 welcomed the announcement as a positive step toward normalising relations between Cuba and the EU.