Cuba’s cocktail-party war. No eating my canapés any more

Date: 21/06/03

Cruel and unusual punishment for Europe's diplomats

IT IS the kind of rhetoric Fidel Castro normally keeps for his best enemy, the United States. But this month he led protests by hundreds of thousands of dutiful Cubans outside the embassies of Spain and Italy. Spain's prime minister, José María Aznar, was denounced as “a little Fuehrer”, and Silvio Berlusconi, his Italian counterpart, as “a fascist”. Both were said to be pushing the European Union into a “fascist-imperialist” alliance with America.

Translation: in the aftermath of Mr Castro's move in April to smash a small but growing democracy movement, his relations with Europe, Cuba's chief trade and investment partner, have fallen to an all-time low. The EU responded to the jailing of dissidents with some mild sanctions: it shelved plans to include Cuba in an aid and trade pact with former colonies, limited high-level visits and cultural exchanges, and began to invite those dissidents who are still free to embassy national-day receptions.

Mr Castro has quickly counter-attacked. Cuban officials would no longer attend EU receptions. Nor would European diplomats be invited to Cuban ones. If diplomats spent too much time with dissidents, the former would be expelled and the latter jailed. Mr Castro also closed Spain's cultural centre in Havana, calling it subversive. The EU foreign ministers responded by again calling for the release of dissidents and hinted at further sanctions.

In fact, these are unlikely. Mr Castro's crackdown has united the EU, which was previously split over how much to engage with his regime. But few Europeans favour economic sanctions, such as cutting aid or trade credits, which would hurt ordinary Cubans. But equally, few expect to make new investments in the island.

George Bush, no doubt to Mr Castro's surprise, decided last month not to tighten the United States' nowadays looser trade embargo against Cuba. So the old dictator has pulled off something improbable: aligning American and European policy towards his regime more closely than at any time in the past four decades.

No problem, says Mr Castro, Cuba still has plenty of friends in Africa, China and South America. It is true that Brazil and Venezuela blocked efforts by the United States to condemn Cuba at last week's meeting of foreign ministers from the Organisation of American States. But such friends have little else to offer Cubans.