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• 02 / 20 / 2010

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Following high-level immigration discussions, Cuba declared on Saturday that sitting down with dissidents proves Washington is out to topple its communist government.

American officials "called together dozens of their mercenaries" hours after concluding highly anticipated talks on migration issues with Cuban leaders in an undisclosed Havana location, Cuba's Foreign Ministry said.

Elizardo Sanchez, head of the independent Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, said a group of Cuban dissident leaders met with a U.S. delegation late Friday at the residence of the head of the U.S. Interests Section, which Washington keeps in Havana because it has no diplomatic relations with the island.

Such a meeting is not unusual when U.S. diplomats visit. But enraged Cuban leaders say the dissidents are not pro-democracy activists, independent journalists and organizers of political opposition groups, but paid agents of Washington planted to destabilize the island's political system.

In a statement published in the Communist Party newspaper Granma, the Foreign Ministry said U.S. leaders' meeting with dissidents, was "contrary to the spirit of cooperation and understanding showed on Cuba's part" during the immigration talks and "demonstrated anew that (U.S.) priorities are more related to supporting the counterrevolution and the promotion of subversion to destabilize the Cuban revolution than with the creation of a climate conducive to real solutions to bilateral problems."

It also said Washington funnels "more than $20 million" to groups that openly oppose its government, many based in southern Florida.

The U.S. delegation was headed by Craig Kelly, deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs and the highest-ranking American official to visit in years.

While meeting with their Cuban counterparts earlier Friday, the delegation strayed from the topic of immigration and called for the immediate release of an American held in a maximum security prison without charge for nearly three months.

Cuba alleges Alan P. Gross, a 60-year-old from Maryland who came to Cuba as an American government contractor, is a spy whose arrest is more evidence Washington is working to topple its political system. Gross' family maintains he is a veteran development worker who was distributing communications equipment to Cuban Jewish groups.

Except for Gross' case and the subsequent American meeting with dissidents, both sides had offered restrained praise for the immigration discussions, which lasted about five hours. The Cubans said the talks were positive and respectful, while the U.S. called them part of a larger, constructive process.

Cuba's Foreign Ministry said in its Saturday statement that its delegation also talked about subjects not related to immigration, including the release of five Cuban agents imprisoned in Miami since the 1990s.

Source: Yahoo