Everyone is talking about the Berlin Wall, which has already been struck down. But there is a 'wall' 90 miles from the Florida shore that the Europeans have decided to break down.
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SPECTREZINE
haunting europe...
EU's lifted sanctions could be turning point for Cuba
July 22, 2008 11:34 | by Amy Coonradt
On June 19, at a summit in Brussels, the European Union announced that it would lift its diplomatic sanctions against Cuba. The gesture was predominantly symbolic, as the restraints, which had been put in place in 2003, had been temporarily suspended since 2005. The decision came about largely due to Spain's 2005 initiative to normalize its relations with Cuba, despite opposition from several other EU members. While the EU's sanctions only froze development aid and visits to Cuba by high-level European officials, the move to lift them signals a commitment to increased dialogue and openness between the EU and Havana. It will surely have positive effects not just for Cuba but for the EU's currently frosty relationship with Latin America over immigration issues. Perhaps most importantly, it serves as a contrast to the hard-line policy of the United States, which has maintained an unbending trade embargo against Cuba since 1964.
The End of a Long Battle
The EU's sanctions were enacted in response to a March 2003 crackdown on Cuban dissidents after Havana had executed three men for hijacking a U.S.-bound ferry, in which a government official was murdered. The crackdown resulted in the imprisonment of seventy-five other Cubans for up to twenty-eight years. At the time, the EU condemned the crackdown, calling it "deplorable," and refused to negotiate with Cuba until it improved its human rights record. According to the EU Report, an angry Fidel Castro accused the European body of "bowing to Nazi-Fascist US policy," and he was further outraged when EU member nations began inviting Cuban dissidents to their Havana embassy functions.
The strained relations between the EU and Cuba began to thaw in January 2005, when Spain's new Socialist government under José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero began a movement within the EU to improve EU-Cuba relations. Many believe Spain is in the best position to attempt to normalize relations with Cuba due to a shared culture and language as well as its own authoritarian past. Following the release of fourteen of the seventy-five dissidents, Spain successfully urged the EU to suspend its sanctions, and restore "formal contact" with Havana, according to Cuba's Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque. Despite heavy criticism from other EU members, in April 2007, Spain's foreign minister, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, visited Cuba in the first trip by a Spanish foreign minister since 1998. This was the first visit by an EU member since the sanctions were imposed, and reflected Spain's desire to have a real dialogue with the island. Several EU members, including Cyprus, Greece, Italy, and Portugal, backed Spain's decision to renew ties with Cuba. However, others, most notably the Czech Republic, remained adamantly opposed to the visit, calling Spain's decision "unilateral" and remarked that the meeting was "unlikely to produce anything new."[Full story on link].
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