US concern over Cuba overshadows Spanish summit

Leaders from Spain, Portugal and Latin America debated immigration and debt yesterday but talks were overshadowed by an unusual intervention by the United States, concerned over summit support for Cuba.

The two-day summit neared its end after leaders and ministers from 22 Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries discussed terrorism, aid to Central America and how to give their Ibero-American grouping a higher international profile.

The leaders found it hard to shake off controversy over Cuba which has dominated the summit despite the unexplained absence of Cuba's veteran communist leader, Fidel Castro.

The US embassy in Madrid publicly announced its concern over a Cuban-backed resolution on terrorism being debated at the summit and a second resolution calling for an end to the US trade embargo on Cuba.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, attending the summit, also expressed concern about the resolution on the embargo.

The draft terrorism resolution put before the meeting backed the extradition from the United States of Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA operative who Venezuela wants to try over the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a Castro ally and outspoken critic of the United States, praised the resolutions on Cuba. Mexican President Vicente Fox said his country was against the embargo on Cuba.

Spanish opposition newspapers have said the language used in the resolution calling for the lifting of the US trade embargo on Cuba is tougher than that used at previous summits, calling it a "blockade" rather than an "embargo".

But one Spanish official said this was a mere linguistic difference and that the Spanish word for "blockade" had been used in past United Nations resolutions.

The Spanish opposition press pounced on the resolutions as a diplomatic "own goal" by the 19-month-old Socialist government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

Zapatero's administration has worked hard to repair relations with the Bush administration damaged by his decision, immediately on taking office in the wake of the al Qaeda-linked Madrid train bombings last year that killed 191 people, to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq.

Spain on Friday announced a $65 million aid package for Guatemala and El Salvador, where more than 1,000 people have died in mudslides and floods linked to Hurricane Stan.

Leaders have talked about swapping debt owed to Spain and other countries for investment in education.