Four-day trade visit to Cuba ends

Four-day trade visit to Cuba ends
Published: 14 October 2015 Written by Czech News

Deputy minister says changes in Cuba irreversible

Havana, Oct 14 (ČTK special correspondent) — The Czech Republic plans to
be far more active in its approach to Cuba, compared with its so far
approach that has been reserved due to human rights violation by the
Cuban communist regime, Czech Deputy Foreign Minister Martin Tlapa, on a
visit to Cuba, said today.

He said the recent developments in Cuba have opened the door to
political rapprochement and economic cooperation.

Prague will not cease to pay attention to the curtailed freedoms of the
Cuban people, but it will not ascribe primary importance to this, Tlapa
said.

"Cuba has embarked on the path of transformation, but the truth is that
the state-run companies still dominate. In Cuba, there are market
conditions that profoundly differ from those known from Europe," Tlapa,
who led a Czech government delegation, including over 20 businesspeople,
on a four-day visit to Cuba, said at its close.

During the visit, he met representatives of the Cuban government and
trade organizations.

The goal of the visit was to follow up a meeting of the two countries'
foreign ministers on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in
September and launch the process of the two countries coming closer to
each other, Tlapa said.

"We have concluded that it makes sense to develop Czech-Cuban
relations, also in view of the changes that have been underway in Cuba
and that seem irreversible to us," Tlapa told the Czech News Agency.

He said Prague plans to promote the mutual diplomatic representation
level from that of charges d'affaires to that of ambassadors.

Czech diplomacy is well aware of the brother Castro regime's
unwillingness to introduce principles of democracy in Cuba, but it does
not want to put emphasis on it like in the past, when relations between
Prague and Havana cooled markedly in the 1990s.

The promotion of "human dignity and human rights is a part of our
foreign policy. We think this is an issue we should present in Cuba.
During the current trip I met representatives of not only the government
but also the civic society," said Tlapa, who also met the Cuban cardinal.

He said the CzechRepublic will support the freedom of access to
information in Cuba by enabling Cubans to follow the Internet, otherwise
available to rich people only, at the Czech embassy.

Simultaneously with the Tlapa-led delegation, Cuba has been visited by a
group of negotiators from the Czech Finance Ministry.

On Wednesday, they launched bilateral negotiations about the sum Havana
owes to Prague, a debt dating back to the pre-1989 period.

Havana owes Kč 7 billion to Prague, the Czechs say

Source: Four-day trade visit to Cuba ends - PRAGUE POST | The Voice of
Prague -
http://www.praguepost.com/world-news/50244-four-day-trade-visit-to-cuba-ends