French President visits Cuba, meets leaders

PanARMENIAN.Net - French President Francois Hollande has met Cuba's 1959 revolutionary leaders Fidel and Raul Castro on a historic trip to Havana, BBC News reports.

Hollande also called for an end to the decades-long U.S. trade embargo against Cuba. He said the embargo badly damaged development of the island.

Hollande is the first French president to visit Cuba since 1898, and the first Western leader on the island since the 1980s.

President Hollande and Fidel Castro spoke for an hour, according to Liberation journalist Laure Bretton who tweeted his comments (in French) after the meeting. "I had in front of me a man who had made history," Hollande told her.

He later met Fidel's brother and current President Raul Castro.

Speaking earlier on Monday, May 11, at the University of Havana, Hollande said France would do its utmost to ensure that "the measures which have so badly harmed Cuba's development can finally be repealed".

He was referring to the U.S. trade embargo, which remains in place, although relations between the US and Cuba have improved in recent months.

The diplomatic thaw between Cuba and the U.S. was announced in December.

Hollande announced plans to double the number of scholarships to enable Cuban students to continue their studies in France, as part of attempts to increase academic and scientific co-operation between the two nations.

The president's first appointment on Monday morning was to bestow France's highest award, the Legion of Honour, on the head of the Catholic Church in Cuba, Cardinal Jaime Ortega.

The Cuban Catholic Church has acted as a mediator between dissidents and the Communist government.

After landing at Havana airport, Hollande said the visit was a moment of "great emotion".

Before arriving, he told reporters that France sought to "be the first among European nations, and the first among Western nations, to be able to say to the Cubans that we will be at their side if they decide themselves to take needed steps toward opening up".

A number of high-ranking U.S. and European politicians have visited Cuba since Dec 17, when the U.S. and Cuba announced they would move towards re-establishing diplomatic ties.

They include New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, EU Foreign Policy chief Federica Mogherini and top diplomats from Japan and Russia. But Hollande is the first Western leader in Cuba since Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzales in 1986.