Fidel Castro lambasts EU
Cuban leader Fidel Castro has criticised the workings of the European Union, saying the bloc is in disarray and has tagged onto the US in taking a hard line against Cuba.
Castro also reiterated his rejection of calls from the EU for fresh "dialogue" until Brussels scraps sanctions against the island.
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In an editorial in the Cuban daily Granma on Thursday (28 June), he wrote that the EU's internal voting and veto system "is politically dysfunctional and curtails, in practice, the sovereignty of all members."
"The European Union is today in worse shape than the former socialist block ever was," he added, explaining that the 27-member bloc has shown "persistent and humiliating subordination" to the US.
The EU reached out to Cuba last week, inviting a Cuban delegation to Brussels in an attempt to improve relations between the bloc and the island on the condition that Cuba agree to discuss human rights in the communist country.
Some EU governments, such as the socialist Spanish leadership, are keen to reach out to a country which has endured a hard-nosed US trade blockade for several years.
But the majority of EU states, as well as major NGOs such as People in Need, say the Castro regime is still as repressive as ever, with dissidents hounded by secret police.
The Cuban opposition movement Ladies in White - the spouses and other relatives of dissidents jailed by the Castro government - received the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 2005.
Last week's EU invitation - after four years of official silence between Europe and the Caribbean regime - was also made in the context of Fidel Castro's health problems.
"The first temporary transfer of power in 48 years to a collective leadership led by his brother Raoul Castro...constitutes a new situation," the EU conclusions said.
But Cuba's foreign ministry rebuked the offer on Friday (22 June), saying talks can only happen when the EU lifts sanctions imposed on the island in 2003.
The 81 year-old Cuban leader is still keeping the door open, however.
The official 22 June declaration expressed that the island "took note" of the European offer and that it "considered" a "rectification necessary."
But it did not explicitly reject the invitation for a Cuban delegation to travel to Brussels to explore the possibilities of better relations, writes Spanish daily El País.