19 June 2008, 22:47 CET
(BRUSSELS) - EU foreign ministers were close to an agreement Thursday on
definitively scrapping the bloc's sanctions against Cuba, to encourage
Raul Castro and his administration in the post-Fidel era.
Miguel Angel Moratinos, foreign minister of Spain which has been
championing the bid to drop the sanctions, said he was hopeful of
reaching a deal at the meeting in Brussels with his EU counterparts.
He said the German coalition had agreed on a unified stance "and I
believe that would allow us to close this subject probably tonight."
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said the 27 member states were
closer to a deal than they had been for weeks.
Many European officials have called for the lifting of the sanctions,
which ban high-level diplomatic contacts. They were introduced in 2003
but have been suspended since 2005.
"I personally think we should go on because we see encouraging signs in
Cuba and I think that we should show the population in Cuba that we are
ready to work with them," said EU External Relations Commissioner Benita
Ferrero-Waldner.
"We should not be insensitive to what is going on," she added, in
reference to the first steps of Raul Castro since taking the reins from
his ailing brother Fidel.
Removing the sanctions would be a symbolic gesture, given that there is
no chance of the suspended measures being reactivated. In order to
maintain some leverage on the Cuban government however, the EU would
agree to review the situation in a year, sources said.
"The lifting of sanctions would give us a more effective way to deal
with the human rights question," through better engagement, Luxembourg
Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said.
The measures were imposed in 2003 after Cuba jailed 75 dissidents and
executed three young Cubans who had attempted to escape to the United
States.
They have had little effect however: the authorities in Havana have only
released 20 of the 75, mostly for medical reasons.
A Cuban dissident group asked the EU on Monday to press Havana for
"real" reforms ahead of a review of its Cuba sanctions, dismissing
changes introduced so far by President Raul Castro as cosmetic.
"It's a repressive and reprehensible regime. We are open to dialogue
with them but they have been slamming the door in our face," Swedish
Foreign Minister Carl Bildt.
"Some people have detected major changes. My microscopes are not big
enough to locate those particular changes, but we'll see," he added.
A small minority of EU member states including the Czech Republic, the
Netherlands and Denmark, have in the past been reluctant to definitively
lift the sanctions. They have insisted that the EU should continue to
press for prisoner release and for improvements on human rights in general.
But a Czech spokesman said Thursday: "We are quite close to an agreement".
Ferrero-Waldner said she had made it clear to the Cuban authorities
"that we want to see progress and we want to see the release of more
political prisoners."
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