Spanish leader agrees to visit Cuba next year

Details of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's trip still needed to be worked out, Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said after meeting Tuesday with his Cuban counterpart in Madrid. He said Spain was satisfied with Cuba's advances in human rights.

Zapatero later told reporters that "there is a proposal" and "we'll see when the time comes if it is carried out and how it is carried out." A government spokesman insisted Zapatero was not throwing doubt on the possibility of the visit but simply saying it was not known when exactly it would happen.

Zapatero's Socialist government played a key role in persuading the European Union to lift diplomatic sanctions against Cuba last June and in pressing the island to improve its human rights record.

The sanctions were imposed in 2003 after Cuba jailed 75 dissidents. Twenty have since been released, but more than 200 dissidents are still serving jail terms in Cuba.

The last time a western European head of state or government visited Cuba was during the Ibero-American Summit in Havana in 1999. It was attended by Spanish King Juan Carlos and then-Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar as well as Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio.

Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said he hoped a meeting Thursday with EU representatives in Paris would mark the beginning of improved relations.

"We believe a start to dialogue between the EU and Cuba is possible," Perez Roque said. "We are putting the final touches to the basis for an agreement."

In Tuesday's talks, Spain agreed to fund a two-year, $34 million program to help Cuba rebuild homes, schools and other structures destroyed by hurricanes this summer, Moratinos said. It also agreed to restructure part of Cuba's $2.1 billion debt to the Spanish government and open a new line of credit worth $69 million to $138 million, he said.