The Cuban government accepted the resumption of political dialogue with the EU on Tuesday, said Javier Nino, EU representative in Havana. The move follows the EU’s lifting of sanctions on Cuba in June this year.
“The Cuban government agrees to begin dialogue ... The EU proposal is an unconditional dialogue, mutual benefit, mutual respect on a number of issues such as rights and environmental issues,” Nino said.
The representative said the Cuban Foreign Ministry announced acceptance of the proposal in a note handed from the ministry to the French embassy, the country currently holding the EU presidency.
“At this moment the two sides are negotiating over when [plans for] the dialogue can be firmed up, but ideally it will be relatively soon,” Nino said.
He said no date or venue had been set.
EU-Cuba relations were frozen in 2003 when the EU imposed sanctions on the island nation in retaliation for the imprisonment of more than 70 dissidents, and the execution of three men convicted of hijacking a passenger ferry and demanding it be taken to the US.
Meanwhile, bypassing its trade embargo on communist Cuba, the US has approved US$250 million in “farm sales” to Havana, including food and construction materials in an aid offer after Hurricanes Gustav and Ike devastated Cuba’s crops, leaving potential for a food crisis, US diplomats said.
The licenses for agricultural sales were approved after Ike lashed Cuba a week ago and “wood, a material essential to rebuilding, is included,” a State Department statement handed to reporters at the US Interests Section in Havana said.
The US State Department said in Washington earlier on Monday it regretted that Cuba had rejected its offer of up to US$5 million in aid for the victims of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike.
The US has tense and limited relations with its communist neighbor, which has been under a US embargo for more than four decades.
Cuba last week urged Washington to ease its trade embargo to allow US firms to open private lines of credit for food imports to the cash-strapped island of more than 11 million people.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
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