CUBA PUTS THE SQUEEZE ON SWITZERLAND AND HUMAN

C O N F I D E N T I A L HAVANA 000649

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/26/2019
TAGS: PREL PHUM CU SZ
SUBJECT: CUBA PUTS THE SQUEEZE ON SWITZERLAND AND HUMAN
RIGHTS

REF: HAVANA 639 AND 616 (NOTAL)

Classified By: COM Jonathan Farrar for Reasons 1.4 (b) and (d)


1. (C) Chief of Mission met October 27 with Swiss ambassador
Peter Burkhard, at Burkhard,s request, to discuss the
November 11-13 visit of a Swiss MFA delegation for their
annual bilateral meeting with the GOC focused on bilateral
and multilateral issues, including human rights. Last year's
meeting was in Switzerland. The delegation includes a Swiss
Vice-Foreign Minister (number 3 in the MFA hierarchy) and
Switzerland's Special Envoy for Human Rights.


2. (C) Ambassador Burkhard said he had planned to follow the
same agenda as the last round in Havana in 2007: full
delegation meetings on day one, site visits on day two, and a
split schedule for the third day, with the VFM meeting with
third country representatives (including USINT) and the Human
Rights Envoy meeting with civil society. Burkhard met last
Friday with MINREX to coordinate the official meetings, a
meeting which he said went well until the end, when the tone
turned frosty and he was informed that any meetings by any
member of his delegation with "persons who do not truly
represent Cuba" would have unspecified repercussions. The
ambassador said he sought clarification, and an explanation
as to what circumstances had changed since the 2007 visit,
but received no satisfactory response. His MINREX
interlocutors merely noted that other European (EU) countries
were adhering to these restrictions and cited the visit of
Spanish FM Moratinos and Croatian President Mesic as recent
examples. Burkhard, who worked for the OSCE in Uzbekistan
prior to his assignment in Havana, said he felt meetings with
civil society were an important check upon what the
delegation would hear from its GOC interlocutors. He has
referred the issue to Bern, and asked the COM for advice.


3. (C) COM reviewed with Ambassador Burkhard the discussions
we had with the GOC in finalizing arrangements for the recent
visit of WHA DAS Bisa Williams, who met with GOC
representatives and with civil society. He noted that we had
informed the GOC that she would be meeting with civil
society, as USG representatives do around the world. The
result was a full range of meetings with GOC institutions and
a luncheon hosted by DAS Williams at USINT with a broad
spectrum of civil society representatives. There had been no
negative repercussions thus far on USINT from the GOC even
though reports of the luncheon leaked out to the press in the
days afterwards. COM offered several potential scenarios
under which the Swiss could undertake a similar meeting with
civil society, and encouraged the ambassador to do so.


4. (C) Background: The ambassador noted that discussions
with the GOC on human rights had proceeded very positively
for a year or so before turning around in the last four to
five months. Last year's bilateral discussion had gone
extremely well. Switzerland also participates in a
quadrilateral forum for human rights discussions with Cuba,
Norway, and Spain, the last round of which took place in May
and was very positive, according to Burkhard (the Norwegian
ambassador has told us the same). As a result, the GOS had
allocated funding to develop cooperative human rights
programs with Cuba and designated a human rights expert to
come to the embassy here on a long-term TDY assignment.
Burkhard said he had hoped, among other initiatives, to be
able to develop Swiss visits to Cuban prisons as an
alternative to the ICRC, which has been banned from Cuban
prisons for two decades. All these plans have been frozen.


5. (C) Action request: We will be encouraging the Swiss
embassy here to follow through with its plan to meet with
civil society but also believe it would be useful for the GOS
to hear the same message in Washington and in Bern. The GOC
is in the midst of a full court press to convince other
countries, particularly Europeans, to drop their interaction
with civil society in Cuba.

FARRAR