While a uniformed Castro spent much of the day walking up
and down a red carpet to greet arriving presidents at Havana
airport, foreign diplomats met dissidents in an implicit and
unprecedented show of support for their efforts to coax the
veteran Communist leader toward political reform.
Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio and Prime Minister
Antonio Guterres met human rights campaigner Elizardo Sanchez in
the first encounter between a head of a foreign government and
an opposition figure on Cuban soil since Castro's 1959
revolution.
The foreign minister of Mexico, a country long seen as
sympathetic to Cuba, also met with Sanchez for about half an
hour of private talks at the Mexican ambassador's residence in
Havana.
Minister Rosario Green said the talks, the first between a
high-ranking Mexican official and a dissident in Cuba in 40
years, could not be seen as interference in Cuba's internal
affairs.
"Summits are not completely hygienic and sterilized,'' said
Green.
Earlier Sanchez and other dissidents met Nicaragua's foreign
minister Eduardo Montealegre and a Costa Rican delegation.
Spanish Premier Jose Maria Aznar is due meet dissidents on
Monday
Cuba's old enemy the United States as well as international
human rights groups had urged the Ibero-American leaders to
seize the opportunity of the 21-nation summit to push Castro to
reform Cuba's one-party socialist system.
Castro had said visiting delegations were free to meet
opposition figures if they wished. But Cuban authorities cracked
down in the days leading up to the event, rounding up or
restricting the movements of dozens of dissidents, said
opposition sources.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Alejandro Gonzalez, in a rare
public confirmation of dissident arrests, told a news conference
Sunday that 15 "counter-revolutionaries'' were currently being
held and investigated for "their attempts to sabotage the
summit.''
But he added: "There is no wave of repression because
that's unnecessary. In Cuba, the people are the guardian of the
revolution.''
Despite the flurry of interest around the dissidents, the
bearded figure of Castro inevitably dominates the summit, the
most important international gathering in Cuba since Pope John
Paul's visit in January 1998.
Once the scourge of many Latin American governments as
Cuban-inspired revolutionary movements battled throughout the
region, the 73-year-old patriarch is now playing genial host and
hoping the event in this historic capital will bring him a
diplomatic triumph.
But it has been overshadowed not only by concern about
Cuba's human rights record and lack of multi-party democracy but
also by continued controversy over the Spanish-instigated
detention of former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet.
The presidents of Chile and Argentina are boycotting the
summit in protest against Spain's efforts to extradite Pinochet
from Britain to stand trial for human rights abuses during his
brutal military rule.
Pinochet was arrested in London last October as the previous
summit was underway in Portugal.
"They can speak all they want about the official theme,
economic globalization, but everyone knows the main topics will
be Castro and Pinochet,'' one Central American diplomat said.
The leaders of Nicaragua, Costa Rica and El Salvador are
also staying away because of differences with Havana.
The summit also seals a reconciliation between Spain and
Cuba after a recent falling out when the center-right Aznar took
a critical stand over Cuba's human rights record.
Much of the pomp and ceremony will surround King Juan
Carlos, who is making the first visit by a Spanish monarch to an
island that was the jewel in the crown of Spain's New World
empire until a bitterly-won independence in 1898. Castro was
expected to meet him Sunday evening.
Spanish diplomats are hoping Chile will not push the
Pinochet issue too far. But the draft summit declaration
implicitly raps Spain by reaffirming the importance of "respect
for the principle of sovereignty, non-intervention and self-
determination of peoples.''