Brussels, 25/04/2000 (Agence Europe) - Cuba has cancelled the visit by the EU Troika scheduled for this week due to the EU's backing of a resolution on human rights in Cuba adopted in Geneva. The Cuban authorities informed Portugal's ambassador to Havana, Antonio Carvalho this weekend that, in current circumstances, they did not regard the visit to be appropriate, Cuba's embassy in Brussels confirmed. Cuba thus intends protesting against EU Member States which voted in favour of a resolution on human rights in Cuba tabled by the United States in Geneva, at the meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission. This resolution "has no objective basis and is only a justification of the United States' blockade against Cuba," sources at Cuba's embassy in Brussels declared.
The visit of the EU Troika, the first since 1995, was meant to rekindle the bilateral dialogue between the EU and Cuba, broken off for four years now. One of the main subjects was to have been the issue of Cuba's accession to the Lome Convention, which has to be discussed at the EU/ACP Ministerial Conference in Fiji in June.
The Troika's visit, to have been led by the Portuguese Minister for Cooperation, Luis Amado, has simply been annulled, but "it has not been ruled out" that further consultations would allow for a new date to be set, say sources at the Cuban embassy.