Cuba president visits Portugal, confirms attendance at EU summit

By Nelson Acosta

HAVANA/LISBON (Reuters) - Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel arrived in Portugal for a state visit, his office said on Thursday, and confirmed his attendance at an upcoming summit with the European Union, a day after the EU's parliament called for sanctions against him.

Diaz-Canel is set to visit Lisbon's parliament on Friday, then head to Brussels, where heads of state from the EU and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) will from Monday attend the first EU-CELAC summit in eight years.

Cuba will attend the summit "in a constructive spirit and help to strengthen bi-regional ties on a basis of equality respect," the Cuban presidency said in a tweet.

Cuba said on Monday it wanted stronger ties with Europe but criticized the EU's approach to the summit as manipulative and opaque. Two days later, the European Parliament passed a resolution strongly criticizing Cuba's human rights record.

The resolution called for sanctions against Diaz-Canel and other top officials, and suggested that "autocratic regimes should not participate in such summits."

Cuba condemned this, saying the parliament lacked the authority to judge the Caribbean island, and questioning the bloc's objectives in re-launching the regional ties.

In July 2021, thousands of Cubans took to the streets in anti-government protests, the largest since Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution. The Communist government then imprisoned hundreds of activists, drawing condemnation from both the EU and the United States.

The Cuban government says the United States helped incite the unrest and accuses those jailed of committing crimes ranging from vandalism to assault and sedition.

Leaders at the Brussels summit are expected to discuss issues such as climate change, development funding and Haiti's security crisis.

(Reporting by Nelson Acosta in Havana and Andrey Khalip in Lisbon; Writing by Sarah Morland; Editing by Frances Kerry)