Cuba Vows to Free 52 Political Prisoners

(July 8) -- Cuba has agreed to release 52 political prisoners, prompting Spain's foreign minister to call on the European Union to ease its refusal to normalize relations with Havana and to describe the move as an opportunity for the U.S. to improve its fractured ties.

One almost immediate result today was that Guillermo Farinas ended his 134-day hunger strike, after saying he would not eat or drink unless there was clear evidence Havana would make good on the deal. After ending his strike, Farinas, a 48-year-old journalist and psychologist, appeared in good spirits, The Associated Press reported.

He had been kept alive through intravenous feeding following the death in February of a fellow activist and hunger-striker, Orlando Zapata Tamayo.

The agreement to free the activists came after three days of talks between Cuba's Roman Catholic Church, led by Cardinal Jaime Ortega, and President Raul Castro. Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos also joined the discussions this week.

Five prisoners were to be released Wednesday, with the rest to be freed in the coming months. They were among 75 arrested in a crackdown on dissidents in 2003.

Laura Pollan speaks with hospitalized dissident Guillermo Farinas on the phone in Havana, Wednesday July 7.

Franklin Reyes, AP

Cuba has promised to free 52 political prisoners in what would be the island's largest release of dissidents since 1998. Here, Laura Pollan, a dissident activist, speaks by phone with prisoner Guillermo Farinas.

Moratinos said the agreement "opens a new era" in Cuba, according to the BBC, adding that "I think there is no reason" for the European Union "to maintain a common position any longer." The EU has refused to change its stance, initiated in 1996, until Cuba shows an improvement in its position on human rights.

"I expect my European colleagues to now respond," he was quoted as saying.

Moratinos was equally positive about the prospect of new relations between Havana and Washington, which has maintained an economic embargo on Cuba.

The release "logically has to help relations with the United States, because now there is no excuse," Reuters quoted him as saying.

A former U.S. diplomat in Havana who is said to favor a lifting of the embargo, Wayne Smith, told The New York Times that the prisoner release should push the Obama administration to "do something to encourage the trend."

A similar view was expressed by Laura Pollan, the head of Ladies in White, a leading dissident group in Cuba whose husband was one of those detained in 2003.

"I believe we are at the doors of a change, a significant change," she told Reuters, adding that she hoped it would be "the first steps of a true freedom, of a true democracy."

But a Cuban-born member of Congress, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican from Florida, warned against being "fooled" by Cuba, saying "maximum pressure" would have to exerted on Havana until all political prisoners were free.

Once the releases are completed, about 100 dissidents will remain jailed in Cuba.