BRUSSELS, June 19.— The European Union agreed on Thursday to revoke its sanctions against Cuba, reported the bloc’s foreign relations commissioner, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, quoted by Reuters.
"The sanctions against Cuba will be lifted,” said Ferrero-Waldner to the press, after foreign ministers of the bloc’s 27 member nations reached the agreement in Brussels.
The unjust EU measures were imposed in 2003 on the pretext of Cuba’s arrest of 75 counterrevolutionaries, paid and sponsored by the United States to subvert the country’s political, social and economic order.
The sanctions included, among other elements, limiting governmental visits, reducing European participation in Cuban cultural events and inviting counterrevolutionaries to receptions organized for national holidays in EU member nations.
In addition to the lifting of sanctions, the EU plans to reactivate political dialogue with Havana. Following the position of the current government of Spain (the country which proposed the sanctions during the right-wing government of José María Aznar, loyal ally of George W. Bush), the rotating EU presidency – held by Slovenia for the first part of 2008 – prepared a text proposing the end of sanctions against Cuba and the opening of a dialogue with the government of President Raúl Castro Ruz.
The document allowed for the agreement by the 27 foreign ministers during the European Council’s opening summit and must now be approved officially, most likely next week during an EU Council Agricultural Ministers meeting in Luxemburg, the AFP reported.
On the initiative of the Czech Republic, one of the EU governments closest to the U.S., a “renewed compromise” was introduced into the text with Anzar’s so-called Common Position of 1996, which has become an instrument of intervention into Cuba’s affairs.
According to AFP, the 27 countries agreed to re-examine “the results of the political dialogue and of human rights” within the year. “What will not be evaluated is the implementation of the measures, because they are already definitively lifted,” said Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos.
"The foreign ministers of the 27 member countries have decided unanimously to definitively lift the 2003 measures and initiate a period of dialogue which includes no conditions and is not limited by measures which the Spanish government never has believed to be worth anything and have even been counterproductive,” said the Spanish diplomatic leader during a press conference.
In the meantime, the reaction in Washington was one of disappointment.
“We are not in favor of the EU or anyone else lifting sanctions at this time,” said State Department spokesperson Tom Casey. “We do not support flexibility with these restrictions on the part of the EU or anybody else,” he added.
