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CUBA & EUROPEAN UNION IMPROVE STRAINED RELATIONS, ENDING "COCKTAIL WARS".

Article Excerpt
Cuba and the European Union (EU) are moving in slow motion toward restoring full diplomatic and cultural relations, which were strained after President Fidel Castro's government cracked down on dissidents and hijackers in April 2003 (see NotiCen, 2003-04-24).

Compared to the economic blockade the US maintains against Cuba, the EU sanctions imposed after the crackdown were mild and slightly comical. Nevertheless, the EU's decision to impose them in the first place and the criticism that lifting them in January has caused underscores how much the issue of dissidents and human rights has become the core of the EU's Cuba policy.

In recent years, the US has focused as much on the alleged mistreatment of dissidents in Cuba as on its socialist orientation and has successfully pressed Europe to help get formal condemnations against Cuba in the annual UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) meetings in Geneva.

In 1996, the EU adopted a Cuba policy (the common position), proposed by then Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, a close friend of Washington and a strident opponent of the Cuban government. The common position is similar in intent and wording to the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which broadly increased sanctions against Cuba. The EU adopted the common position after an intense campaign by Washington to get an EU policy parallel to its own (see NotiCen, 2003-02-06).

The common position mimics the US claim that Cuba harbors hundreds of political prisoners and deprives dissidents of their rights. Since 1996, the EU has conditioned better relations on improvements in Cuba's human rights behavior.

Cuba has consistently...

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