Statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the European Union position against Cuba
Once again the European Union has decided to kowtow to the U.S. government
over the subject of its policy towards Cuba.
The European
Union, ignoring usual diplomatic practices, published a communiqué
on the morning of June 5th in which they announced punitive measures against
Cuba and told the international community that they had sent a letter to Cuban
authorities. This only reached the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that afternoon.
This did not take the foreign ministry by surprise: we were very well aware
that Europe most probably, hoped that the aforementioned document be seen
in Washington before it was seen in Havana.
They are very conscious in Europe that their decision to join in the U.S. government's attacks against Cuba will be seen as more proof of their contrition and repentance over the differences that arose over the war in Iraq between "Old Europe" - as Mr Rumsfeld called it- and the imperial Nazi-fascist government which is trying to impose a dictatorship on the rest of the world.
The new statement signed by the Fifteen is the culmination of a stage of continual pronouncements and aggressions against Cuba made at the very time when our country has had to deal with the cunning plans which people in Miami and Washington are hatching to try to come up with pretexts for a military attack on our country.
That escalation included:
- March 25, a Note from the Presidency protesting the fair sentences handed down by Cuban courts on a group of mercenaries in the service of the U.S. government.
- April 14, a new Statement from the Union's Foreign Relations Council, proposed by the Spanish foreign minister, in which the mercenaries are referred to as political prisoners and Cuba is crudely threatened with steps that would affect "plans to increase cooperation";
- April 18, another protest Note from the Presidency which repeats the threats against Cuba;
- April 30, at the request of a Spanish commissioner the European Commission's College of Commissioners decides to postpone indefinitely any consideration of Cuba's application to join the Cotonou Convention. Therefore, given Europe's treacherous behaviour, Cuba decided for the second time to withdraw its application which it had made because unanimously urged to do so by the Group of African Caribbean and Pacific Countries
Later, on May 27, there was another attempt to deliver a protest Note, but our Foreign Ministry refused to accept it because it thought this now constituted intolerable inference in Cuba's internal affairs.
And, lastly, this new Declaration appears and Cuba first learns about it from the foreign press and not from the European Union itself.
This unheard of display against our country has been all the more noticeable because of Europe's proverbial wisdom about keeping respectfully silent when it suits it and even in being a tolerant bystander to behaviour and acts far worse than those of which Cuba is now being groundlessly accused. How, for example, are we to judge its silence over the U.S. army's crimes against the Iraqi civilian population?
It's too much. After exhausting her patience and capacity for dialogue and tolerance, Cuba feels obliged to reply to what it considers to be the European Union's hypocritical and opportunist behaviour.
In its most recent Declaration, "the European Union laments that Cuban authorities have ended their de facto moratorium on the death penalty".
Cuba will not go into great detail about the extraordinary reasons, explained more than once, that forced it to take energetic measures against three armed hijackers who had criminal records who threatened to kill dozens of hostages, including several European tourists. Cuba has never heard a word from the European Union condemning the death penalty in the United States. It has never seen the European Union spearhead a motion in the Commission on Human Rights condemning the United States for inflicting the death penalty on minors, the mentally ill and foreigners who were denied their right to meet with their consuls. Cuba has never heard the European Union criticize the 71 executions that took place in the United States last year, including the executions of two women. Why does the European Union condemn the death penalty in Cuba and not in the United States?
Therefore Cuba does not take the Union's lament seriously; it knows it is replete with hypocrisy and double moral standards.
The Declaration
quotes verbatim from the letter delivered to the Cuban foreign ministry in
which it repeats the same arguments the U.S. government uses. It is once again
seeking to disguise as "opposition members" and "dissidents"
the mercenaries who, in the pay of the U.S. government, hope to play their
part from inside Cuba in the U.S. government's goal of overthrowing the Cuban
revolution.
Later on, the European Declaration appeals to Cuban authorities to ensure
that the prisoners do not suffer unduly prisoners and are not exposed to to
inhuman treatment" Cuba will make no attempt to comment on this offensive
appeal. All it will say is that it is a despicable thing to do.
Cuba will not repeat the arguments it has used over and over again. It will only point out that it has never heard the European Union say one word of censure about the hundreds of prisoners -some of whom are Europeans- who the United States is holding, in violation of the most basic norms about human rights, in the naval base in Guantanamo which they force on us against our will. The European Union has never said a word about the thousands of prisoners that the United States has kept locked up since September 11, often simply because of the way they looked or because they are Muslims. These people do not enjoy even the most basic legal safeguards, nor have they been been tried and their names have not even been published.
Four measures
have been announced.
First: Limit bilateral high-level government visits.
We must remember that in the last five years not one European Union head of
state or government has visited Cuba.
Not even the king of Spain, Don Juan Carlos 1, whose natural charm and modesty
have earned him the respect of the Cuban government and people, could carry
out his official visit; the head of the Spanish government, José María
Aznar, who, according to the constitution must give his approval, was categorical.
"The King will go to Cuba when it's his turn".
What is more, only two of the fifteen's foreign ministers have visited Cuba
since 1998: Mr Louis Michel, of Belgium in 2001 - he made a genuine effort
to expand relations- and Mrs Lydie Polfer from Luxembourg, in 2003.
No one else in Europe - and they have even less desire to do so- wanted to
upset Washington. Meanwhile in 2002 alone, 663 high-level delegations from
the rest of the world visited Cuba, including 24 heads of state or government
and 17 foreign ministers.
Second: To reduce the participation of member States in cultural events.
On this unheard of decision by educated and civilized Europe we will only
say that its authors should, at the very least, be ashamed of themselves.
To make artists and intellectuals, both European and Cuban, and our people
who benefit from cultural exchanges, into the particular victims of aggression
is such a reactionary measure that it seems inconceivable here in the 21st
century.
The first indication of this absurd policy had come from the Spanish government
in April when it cancelled the Spanish delegation's participation in the "La
Huella De España" (Traces of Spain) festival whose mission is
to pay homage to the culture of this sister nation. And to that is added the
fact that the Spanish Cultural Centre in Havana, far from promoting Spanish
culture in Cuba, the purpose for which it was created, has, in open defiance
of Cuban laws and institutions and in flagrant violation of the intent of
the agreement that set it up, programmed a series of activities that have
nothing to do with its original function.
In the next few days Cuban authorities will take the appropriate measures
to convert this centre into an institution that truly meets the noble aim
of popularizing Spanish culture in our country.
Third: To invite Cuban dissidents to national holiday celebrations.
This decision, which will, to all intents and purposes, turn European ambassadors
in Havana into Mr. Carson's hired hands, and which will put the embassies
of the European Union's member countries at the service of the U.S. Interests
Section's subversive work - something that up until now only the Spanish embassy
has done openly- formalises the European Union's intention of defying the
Cuban people, their laws and institutions.
Cuba calmly but firmly issues a warning to European embassies and to local
U.S. government mercenaries that it will not tolerate provocation or blackmail.
The mercenaries who try to turn the European embassies in Havana into centres
for conspiring against the Revolution should be aware that the Cuban people
will be quite capable of demanding that our laws be rigorously applied. European
embassies should be conscious of the fact that they will be failing to meet
their obligations under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations if they
allow themselves to be used for subversion against Cuba.
The responsibility for any measure that Cuba may have to take to defend its
sovereignty and the consequences of these measures will lie exclusively with
the European Union, which, with unmitigated arrogance has taken a decision
which profoundly offends the Cuban people's sensibility and decorum.
Fourth: Re-examine the European Union's Common Position on Cuba.
This last point
is Mr. Aznar and the Spanish government's way of announcing, from this moment
on, its hopes of making the wording of the so-called Common Position on Cuba
tougher. The Position, it is worth remembering, was imposed by Spain on the
rest of the European Union in 1996.
On November 13 of that year, under the headline: "Spain proposes that
the European Union cut credit to and cooperation with Cuba" the Spanish
daily El País reported that:
"In Brussels tomorrow, the Spanish government will propose to its partners
in the European Union that they implement a strategy of economic harassment
of Fidel Castro's regime(…) The package Aznar is proposing closely follows
the line of current U.S. policy. The plan Aznar's government wants to push
through entails cutting off the flow of cooperation and credit from the Fifteen
and raising the level of the dialogue with the anti-Castro opposition.
"(…) The measures planned by Aznar … envisage a complete break
in Spanish Cuba policy…"
This proposition
would be added to the measures reported on by the newspaper that day - these
includes Aznar's attempt to cancel cooperation between the fifteen countries
and Cuba, the end of business agreements and the elimination of the scarce,
expensive and short term credits that Cuba used to receive at that critical
time in special period.
Dialogue with the opposition. Each of the fifteen European ambassadors in
Cuba would appoint a diplomat who had specialised in setting up a high level
dialogue with groups that oppose Castro. The European governments would invite
these groups to maintain high level permanent contacts with them.
"This package would be made formal through an EU "common position"
and would be directly inspired by the U.S. policy of harassment trumpeted
abroad by itinerant U.S. ambassador, Stuart Eizenstadt".
According to
El País, and this was later confirm by what happened: "This U.S.
diplomat has gone around the European foreign ministries stressing the need
for the European Union to abandon its current strategy …" towards
Cuba.
"Eizenstadt has also promised that if the fifteen members of the Union
go along with the U.S. way of seeing things, Washington will "grant"
its partners successive postponements in the application of the Helms-Burton
Act which tightens the blockade on Cuba and harasses European companies investing
in Cuba".
El País ended by saying: "Spain, which used to be the mainstay
of an autonomous way of doing things would thus become, if its initiative
was successful, the spearhead of the opposite tendency".
And Mr. Aznar's initiative was successful. The Common Position sprang from
it as did later on the shameful European Union's Understanding with the United
States over the Helms-Burton Act in which European governments agreed to bow
to the conditions imposed by the United States in return for a U.S. promise
not to sanction European companies. This new campaign of the European governments
against Cuba also stems from Aznar's initiative.
Mr Aznar, obsessed with punishing Cuba and now a minor ally of the Yankee
imperial government, has been the person mainly responsible for the fact that
the European Union has not developed an independent and objective approach
to Cuba and today is the man mainly responsible for its traitorous escalation
in aggression, just when our little island has become the peoples' symbol
of resistance to the threat that the United States may impose a Nazi-fascist
tyranny on the rest of the world, including European peoples -who were recently
unrecognised and humiliated when their stalwart opposition to the war in Iraq
was ignored- and even on the American people themselves.
Cuba knows that
the Spanish government has been funding the annexationist and mercenary groups
which the superpower is trying to organise in our country- just as the U.S.
government does, following the dictates of the Helms-Burton Act.
How can we explain Mr Aznar's interest in "promoting democracy in Cuba"
if he was the first and only European head of government to support the fascist
coup in Venezuela and offer his "support and availability" to the
ephemeral "president" of the Venezuelan coup?
Nevertheless, Cuba places no blame on the noble Spanish people, nor on any of the other European peoples. Quite the contrary. Cuba is aware of how much warmth and admiration it arouses in many of the citizens of those countries - in spite of the loathsome media campaigns- which send us almost a million visitors every year. Cuba knows how much solidarity it arouses in Europe and throughout these years has received a helping hand from thousands of European non-governmental organisations, civic associations and town councils.
Cuba is aware
that the European peoples - giving an exemplary ethical and humane lesson-
opposed the war in Iraq, which the European Union could not, however, avoid,
divided as it was by the betrayal of the rest of Europe lead by the Spanish
government and humiliated by a superpower which went so far as to announce
that it would launch a military attack on the Hague if a single U.S. soldier
was brought to trial at the International Criminal Court there.
Cuba has only feelings of friendship and respect for the European peoples
but cannot allow their governments, trailing along behind the Spanish government's
commitment to the groups of Cuban born terrorists who operate in Miami and
to Bush's government, to be a part of setting up mercenary groups in Cuba
whose purpose is to help Yankee attempts to destroy the Cuban Revolution and
annex our country to the Unites States.
The European Union's decision to join in with the U.S.' aggressive policy
against Cuba has been welcomed with great joy and loud applause not only by
the U.S. government, whose secretary of state said: "The United States
will be able to join with the European Union in a common strategy against
Cuba", but also by the mercenaries who are still working for the U.S.
government inside our country and by the spokespeople for the Miami terrorist
groups.
The so-called Council for Cuba's Freedom, a Miami group of Batista supporters which has recently been demanding that President Bush decrees a naval blockade of Cuba, said: "We are glad that Europe is joining in with the pressure…" and the terrorist Cuban-American National Foundation was extremely happy and emphasised that "it was time that the European countries realised…"
The DPA news
agency gave this title to its report: " Rejoicing in the exile community
over the European Union's decision on Cuba" and said that extremist Cuban
groups reacted enthusiastically and that the top story on Miami Spanish language
TV stations' evening news broadcasts was the European Unions decision. The
news bulletins focused their coverage on the measures that the EU will take.
It's obvious whose needs are met by the European Union's statement and why
the Miami terrorist groups are so happy, groups that are responsible for bombs
attacks on European interests in Cuba and even for the death of a young Italian,
Fabio di Celmo. It is quite clear why those who are today demanding that the
U.S. government tighten the blockade and step up military aggression against
our country are clapping their hands.
Cuba, for its part, will defend its right to be a free and independent nation
with or without European support and will even stand up to the connivance
between certain governments and the fascist clique that today rules the United
States.
Cuba does not look upon all European governments equally and is well aware
which ones are the chief instigators of this unwonted provocation.
Moreover, it must be said that the conduct of the Italian government headed
by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is giving a helping hand to the Spanish
government's conspiratorial activities.
Italy took a unilateral decision to suspend its development cooperation with
Cuba which this year might have been worth almost 40 million Euros. This included
cancelling:
1. An aid credit for 17.5 million Euros which would have helped to improve
irrigation systems and increase food production in Granma and Havana provinces.
2. An aid credit of 7.4 million Euros for the Plaza del Cristo in Old Havana.
This money would have made it possible to repair the homes of some 500 families,
two schools and drinking water, electricity and sewage services for those
living in the neighbourhood.
3. A donation of 400, 000 Euros to set up a Senior Citizens Care Centre in
the old Belén Convent. This would have provided services to some two
hundred older people and would have been managed by the Office of the Historian,
local Public Health authorities and the Sisters of Charity order.
4. A donation of 6.8 million Euros though the United Nations Development Programme
which would have been used to support local basic social services such as
education, health, care for the physically challenged and senior citizens.
5. A donation of 6.8 million Euros, through UNDP, which was to have been used
for buying equipment for the eastern provinces, basically for the health and
food production sectors.
6. A donation of 534, 000 Euros which would have financed a cooperation and
exchange programme between the Italian University of Tor Vergata and the University
of Havana.
This is the highly
strange way in which the Italian government is preparing to defend the human
rights of the Cuban people.
This ridiculous role the Europeans are playing would make one laugh were it
not for the serious problems this escalation entails.
And we must state
very clearly:
Cuba does not recognise the European Union's moral authority to condemn it
and much less to issue it with a threatening ultimatum about relations and
cooperation. Cuba has taken decisions that only the Cuban people and the Cuban
government are competent to judge, these decisions are absolutely legitimate
and rest solidly on our country's laws and Constitution.
The European Union, which unlike Cuba is not blockaded nor militarily threatened
by the United States, should look with respect on the Cuban people's struggle
for its right to independence; it should keep discreetly silent when it knows
that it has often kept its mouth shut when it is looking after its own interests;
when it knows that it has never adopted a common position on the repressive
Israeli regime; when it knows that it opposed the Commission on Human rights
even looking at the threat that war posed to Iraqi children's right to life.
Finally, the Ministry of Foreign relations reminds the European Union that
Cuba is a sovereign country that won its full independence as the result of
a long and painful process which included more than half a century's struggle
against a corrupt neo-colonial society which established itself in our country
after the shameful Paris Agreements in which Spain ceded Cuba to the United
States behind the backs of Cuban patriots.
Cuba has won the legal right, recognised by international law, to decide for
itself, exercising its full sovereignty and with no foreign interference,
the economic, political and social system which best suits its people.
Cuba does not accept the interfering and disrespectful language of the latest
European Union Statement and asks it to refrain from offering solutions that
the Cuban people did not ask it for. Cuba, however, reiterates its respect
and admiration for European peoples with whom it hopes to strengthen honourably
and in a dignified manner the most fraternal and sincere relations as soon
as History sweeps away all this hypocrisy, rottenness and cowardice,
Ministry of Foreign
Affairs
Havana 11 June, 2003
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