US embassy cable - 05VIENNA101

UNCLAS VIENNA 000101 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
DEPARTMENT FRO WHA/CCA , EUR/ERA AND EUR/AGS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PHUM, PREL, CU, AU, EUN 
SUBJECT: EU COMMON POSITION ON CUBA: AUSTRIAN RESPONSE 
 
REF: SECSTATE 233497 
 
This message is sensitive but unclassified. 
 
1.  (SBU) Embassy conveyed reftel points to Austrian MFA 
DAS-equivalent for Latin American Kornelia Weihs on January 
10.  Pol Unit Chief followed up with Weihs (who had just 
returned from the COLAT EU working group meeting in Brussels) 
on January 12.  Weihs told us that the Luxembourg Presidency 
had also distributed the U.S. non-paper on the Common 
Position on Cuba at the COLAT meeting, but that the paper had 
arrived too late for member state reps to consider it. 
 
2.  (SBU) Weihs explained that although the December General 
Affairs and External Relations Council (GAERC) had taken a 
decision in principle to suspend some of the measures against 
Cuba, the modalities of this were still to be worked out. 
After the COLAT, the PSC, COREPER, and finally, the January 
31 GAERC would take final action on implementation. 
 
3.  (SBU) Weihs told us that the Cuban government's freeze on 
contacts with EU member state Embassies and the EU Commission 
representation in Havana had led to an unproductive 
stalemate.  EU Member states had therefore settled on a 
suspension of the EU agreed measures until the end of June 
2005 in an attempt to re-start a dialogue with the Cuban 
regime and bring some movement into a stagnant situation. 
The Cuban government then abandoned its divide-and-conquer 
tactics on January 3 by agreeing to renew diplomatic contacts 
with all the EU member state missions and the Commission. 
 
4.  (SBU) However, the release (into house arrest) of 14 
gravely ill detainees had impressed none of the member 
states, Weihs said.  All were convinced that the regime's 
sole motivation was to avoid having any of the dissidents die 
in detention.  The EU was still seeking consensus on how to 
proceed in order to help bring about an improvement in the 
status of the detainees and, generally, to promote democracy 
and human rights in Cuba.  It was up to the Luxembourg 
presidency to propose a common approach at the February 8 
COLAT, when the U.S. paper would also be on the agenda. 
Brown