Thursday February 26, 2009

Raul Castro meets French envoy sent by Sarkozy

By Jeff Franks

HAVANA (Reuters) - French envoy Jack Lang met with Cuban President Raul Castro on Wednesday as France moved to improve relations with the Communist island in hopes of steering it toward political openness and rapprochement with the United States.

Lang, dispatched to Cuba by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, said he and Raul Castro talked for two hours in what he said was a "direct and friendly" climate between two countries that had strained relations in recent years.

France, said Lang, wanted to be "the motor" pushing dialogue between Cuba and other parts of the world, but particularly the United States, which has imposed a trade embargo since 1962 against the island nation 90 miles (144 km) from its shores.

U.S. President Barack Obama represents "an important political change" that could bring an end to 50 years of hostilities with Cuba, he said.

"We want to substitute a climate of cooperation for confrontation," Lang said. "I'm very happy to think that we are living in a time when perhaps the end of the embargo will come."

French-Cuban ties had been frayed since the European Union imposed diplomatic sanctions on Cuba in 2003 after Havana imprisoned 75 presumed opponents of the Communist government. About 55 are believed to still be in jail.

The EU voted in June to lift the sanctions in the hope of encouraging reform in Cuba after Raul Castro replaced his sick brother Fidel Castro as president a year ago. It has since agreed to restore aid flows.

Lang, a Socialist former minister, was sent by Sarkozy on what a French official called a short, ad hoc mission to test the waters for change in Cuba.

Fidel Castro, 82, took power in a 1959 revolution against a U.S.-backed dictator and ruled for 49 years.

Raul Castro, 77, has made minor economic reforms and spoken of his willingness to meet with Obama, who also has spoken of dialogue with the Cubans and easing the embargo aimed at toppling the Castro government.

Lang had not met with Fidel Castro, who sees some, but not all visiting dignitaries. For Raul Castro, Lang was the latest in a long line of leaders and envoys who have come to Havana in recent months.

Lang is well-known in France after he served a culture minister in the 1980s under President Francois Mitterrand, who had close ties with Fidel Castro.

He had been tipped for months for a job under Sarkozy, but the appointment is still awkward for the Socialists. The party has been in disarray since Sarkozy defeated its candidate Segolene Royal in France's presidential election in 2007.

(Additional reporting in Paris by Francois Murphy)

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