Europe Excludes Cuba From Aid Funds

NADI, Fiji (AP) — The European Union has excluded Cuba from a multibillion-dollar pool of aid because of its poor human rights record and lack of democracy, a spokesman for a group of former European colonies said Friday.

Cuba is a new member of the African Caribbean Pacific group, or ACP, which is holding a leaders' summit at a palm-fringed island resort near the Fijian town of Nadi. The 63 national delegations are trying to forge a single negotiating position ahead of trade talks with Brussels in September.

Central to the talks is a 25-year pact signed by the EU and ACP in 2000, known as the Cotonou agreement, which promises $12.7 billion in aid to ACP states over the next five years if they show efforts to improve human rights and root out corruption.

EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy, who is attending the summit, on Friday rejected overtures from ACP leaders to give Cuba quick access to the agreement, said ACP spokesman Hegel Goutier.

The EU believes Cuba cannot satisfy basic principles of the agreement, especially with respect to democracy and human rights, said Billie Miller, deputy prime minister of Barbados, who heads the Caribbean grouping at the summit.

Miller said she had formally appealed on behalf of Caribbean nations to the EU to fast track Cuba's inclusion.

The head of Cuba's delegation, Ricardo Cabrisas, called the EU decision ``a humiliation and slap in the face for Cuba,'' Goutier said.

Lamy told delegates that the EU wanted to see more political reform from Havana, Goutier said.

I am genuinely surprised by this - generally the Euro's have always seemed like they kind of admired Castro.

The EU believes Cuba cannot satisfy basic principles of the agreement, especially with respect to democracy and human rights...

It doesn't stop them from trading with Cuba though.

While the European Union, after loosing tens of billions of dollars in trading with Castro and realizing the stupidity of their engagement with the murderous Cuban regime, we are seeing the useful idiots and fellow travelers sympathizers of the tyrant trying in the Congress and the Senate to help him to remain in power by providing him with American tourists and taxpayers hard earned money.

EU hoping for developing world summit to agree on free trade talks - Castro and Mugabe take a pass*** NADI, Fiji - The European Union wants a group of poor nations to agree to a common position on negotiating free trade deals with Brussels, an EU official said Monday. But observers said the unwieldy nature of the 78-nation grouping of African, Caribbean and Pacific island nations makes any unified position from the summit unlikely. The third African Caribbean Pacific summit was to start Tuesday at a palm-fringed resort in Fiji's palm-fringed city of Nadi, as the member states prepare to negotiate free trade agreements with the EU in September. According to the African Caribbean Pacific or ACP secretariat, about 63 national leaders are attending, including South African President Thabo Mbeki. Two of its most controversial leaders - Cuba's Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe - will not be there.

The European Union is telling the ACP - which accounts for more than 650 million people and includes 40 of the world's poorest countries - that if they want to keep getting European aid, they will have to start removing their trade barriers to Europe's exports. Under an agreement signed between the group's members and the EU in 2000 at Cotonou in the African state of Benin, the European Union is also linking trade and aid to ACP states which impose safeguards to prevent corruption.***

Fidel Castro - Cuba

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