Guadalajara, 01/06/2004 (Agence Europe) - Despite the absence of its Head of State, Fidel Castro, Cuba's voice rang out loud and clear at the EU/Latin America/Caribbean summit in Guadalajara. As the session came to an end, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque said there had been a serious omission in the final declaration, as it does not mention the US "Helms-Burton" law on the embargo on Cuba in the paragraphs condemning unilateral action (see EUROPE of 29 May, p;4). "The European Union prevented this from happening", he said. The Cuban minister also denounced the terms chosen for denouncing in the declaration "any form of torture or other inhumane treatment" without explicitly mentioning the fate of the Iraqi prisoners or the United States. "Cuba reserves its position regarding the Summit's political declaration because of the flagrant omissions in the text, the ambiguous language used and because we consider that the consensus remained short of the most urgent needs of our people", he commented. Commission President Romano Prodi expressed his great regret with regard to the attitude of the Cuban authorities saying it is not in Cuba's interest to clash with Europe and to isolate itself from the international community. "The EU does not wish to isolate Cuba", he pointed out. Mr Prodi stressed that the EU also condemned the extra-territorial scope of the Helms-Burton law as well as the repression carried out against Cuban dissidents, against "people who are neither spies nor criminals but who simply exercise freedom of expression". "Before improving relations with Cuba, we must improve the situation", he said. Along the same lines, President Chirac stressed that the "European Union and France have never been in favour of embargo in general and against Cuba in particular", but the EU also took a stance "after the brutal repression of 75 dissidents and the execution of three persons who had … hijacked a small boat". Handled by the foreign ministers and at technical level, the reference to the Helms-Burton law in the final declaration was never tackled at Head of State level, Jacques Chirac pointed out. Cautious after the difficult resumption of political dialogue between Mexico and La Havana, Mexican President Vicente Fox, simply noted that the participants "sought to make collective efforts of dialogue" and that Cuba "had the right to state its position which is not that of the others". Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero insisted, for his part, that Cuba's position was a minority stance which should provide Cuba with something to consider. At the end of the day, Cuba's attitude made the Latin American leaders ill at ease, one diplomat from the region said. For Europeans, it could make even more difficult the attempts to resume dialogue, that the Irish Presidency had initiated and which were supported by the new government in Spain.