The European Union has aligned itself with the U.S.A. and bolstered its anti-Cuban dreams
BY JOAQUIN RIVERY TUR—Granma daily staff writer—
THE United States has mounted an international defamation campaign against Cuba that has been joined by Europe with an attitude that is more negative than the one it displayed on voting alongside the empire against Cuba at the Human Rights Commission in Geneva.
The European Union (EU) has always bent to Washington’s wishes in its attitude to Cuba, given that it follows the line dictated by the White House. Now it has announced a "packet" of sanctions against our country, thus reinforcing the campaign unleashed by the U.S. government.
A Cuban TV Roundtable on the issue was opened by Arleen Rodríguez Derivet, editor of Tricontinental magazine, who detailed the so-called diplomatic sanctions adopted by the EU, which even views common criminals as "dissidents" attempting to hijack vessels in order to emigrate to the United States.
As a punishment for the our people’s resolute conduct in self-defense, the EU has decided to cut back and curtail high-level governmental visits, to reduce the participation of the member states in cultural activities, and to invite the ill-named "dissidents" to celebrations of these countries’ national days, as well as to re-examine its common position.
For the first time it has been decided that the diplomatic missions will invite the enemies of the government with whom they have relations – individuals moreover in the pay of a foreign power – to their receptions.
These measures were not even brought to the attention of the Cuban state but publicly announced, seemingly in a EU attempt to ingratiate itself with the empire that that won the war against Iraq.
It would also appear to be an attempt to restore a unity that the Europeans had lost on account of the different positions to the military aggression against Iraq, when some members obediently followed Washington and other opposed the destruction of that Arab country.
Journalist Lázaro Barredo stressed that Cuba’s attitude to the European Union has always been one of respect despite its having lost the political essence in its treatment of our country.
Barredo recalled that when Clinton introduced the Helms-Burton Act, it looked as if the Europeans were going to form a common front against the United States in order to protect their interests, but Commissioner Leon Brittan entered into secret talks with the United States to establish commitments behind the backs of governments and parliaments, and all of them agreed to bend to the United States and withdraw a complaint that they had presented to the World Trade Organization in exchange for the non-application of the section of the act that sanctions foreign investors with businesses in Cuba, and which directly affected European countries.
In fact, it would seem that from that moment the EU began to prepare – with the close collaboration of José María Aznar – the so-called common position against Cuba, in which Europe cedes its independence and autonomy and, in practice, caves in to the United States in its treatment of Cuba.
With the "common position," the Europeans handed over everything in exchange for nothing and simply left humiliated. The European Union is turning its back on its own citizens and its own business community, and assuming the same arrogance of the United States in a fruitless attempt to intimidate Cuba.