WASHINGTON -

Diplomat is critical of Spain's Cuba stance

From Herald Staff and Wire Reports

A top U.S. diplomat on Friday criticized Spain's attempts to warm up the European Union's relations with Cuba as ``wrongheaded.''

Following a meeting between the foreign ministers of Cuba and Spain, the Cuban government this week released six of the 75 dissidents arrested in a crackdown last year.

''Shifting people in and out of jail cells is something [Cuban President Fidel] Castro does with aplomb,'' Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere Roger Noriega told a gathering at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Castro ''dollops them out for diplomatic favor,'' a practice that is ''cynical and evil,'' Noriega said. ''And making concessions to a regime of that nature is really wrongheaded policy.'' Cuba suspended all contacts with EU diplomats in Havana last year after the Europeans condemned the arrests of the 75 and began inviting dissidents to embassy functions. But Spain's new Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has taken a softer stance on Cuba than his conservative predecessor, José Maria Aznar.

Noriega said those who credit a government for ``releasing innocent persons from jail are not only humiliating themselves but they're complicit in a policy of putting people in jail for simply thinking about their own lives.''

''As some of our European friends look to retool their policy, it should not be engaging with a rotting, disintegrating, deteriorating regime. It should be engaging the Cuban people like never before,'' he added.