CUBA: Carter Meets with Dissidents

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, May 13 2002 (IPS) - Former United States President Jimmy Carter held his first meeting with dissidents Monday in Cuba, on the second day of a visit carried out on the invitation of President Fidel Castro.

Carter met with two of Cuba’s most prominent dissidents: the head of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, Elizardo Sánchez, and Osvaldo Payá, the head of the Christian Liberation Movement.

Cuba’s opposition groups, which are illegal though tolerated, are written off by Castro’s socialist government as “mercenaries” in the pay of Washington.

However, the Cuban leader was unusually moderate Sunday when he said he would not be offended or annoyed by Carter’s scheduled visits with dissident groups.

“You will have free access to every place you want to see in Cuba, and we shall not take offence from any contact you may wish to make, even with those who do not share in our struggles,” Castro said in the welcome ceremony at the Havana international airport.

In his meeting with Sánchez and Payá, Carter, who served as president of the United States from 1977 to 1981, discussed Project Varela, a petition drive by a coalition of dissident groups that delivered 11,000 signatures to parliament last Friday seeking a referendum on economic and political reforms.

The one-hour meeting took place in the Santa Isabel Hotel in Old Havana, where Carter and his wife Rosalynn are staying.

At the end of the meeting, Payá – the driving force behind Project Varela – and Sánchez said Carter was thoroughly familiar with the initiative.

Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque told the press Sunday that Project Varela was an “imported” initiative to which the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Interests Section had “fully dedicated themselves.”

After Pérez Roque met with Carter on Sunday afternoon, the minister underlined the “broad and respectful” discussion they held on questions of mutual interest.

“We share the common hope that someday relations between the United States and Cuba will be normalised,” said the minister, who noted that the question was one of the main issues they discussed.

Although diplomatic ties between the two countries were cut off in 1961, the tension thawed somewhat during Carter’s term, when the U.S. and Cuban Interests Sections were opened in Havana and rm, when the U.S. and Cuban Interests Sections were opened in Ha