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| Directorate of Intelligence (DI) Officer Josefina Vidal |
Top Cuban and U.S. Diplomats Meet in Washington
(Radio Havana Cuba)
The U.S. Undersecretary of State for Latin America, Roberta Jacobson,
has met in Washington with the Director for North America of the Cuban
Foreign Ministry, Josefina Vidal.
Neither
side has revealed the contents of the meeting, although observers say
that the shutting down of consular services at Cuba's diplomatic
representation in Washington might have topped the agenda of the
meeting. Since February, Cuba's diplomatic mission in Washington has
been forced to stop all consular procedures after M&T Bank of
Buffalo, New York, closed the accounts the mission used to deposit the
consular fees it collected. An official statement by Cuban diplomatic
representatives said that the island hasn’t been able to find a bank
based in the U.S. that assumes its accounts “due to restrictions derived
from the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the
United States on Cuba.” M&T Bank has never explained why it closed
all the accounts it handled for Cuba, including some for Cuba's
Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York City, as well as
other countries. United States and Cuba maintain regular contacts at the
technical level to discuss specific issues such as migration and postal
services, but are not comparable to Vidal's visit to Washington, which is a high-level diplomatic dialogue.
Editor’s Note: Vidal
departed Washington in May 2003 after the US declared her husband and
13 other Cuban spy-diplomats Persona Non Grata. Among the seven spies
expelled from the Cuban Interest Section was her husband, First
Secretary Jose Anselmo Lopez Perera. First Secretary Josefina de la C. Vidal, also known to the US as a Cuban Intelligence Officer, “voluntarily” returned to Cuba.
The
husband-wife spy team was chosen for expulsion, in part, because
Washington knew Havana historically withdraws the spouse of any expelled
spy.
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