MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Uruguay to Keep Relations With Cuba

Uruguay's President Jorge Batlle said Saturday his country will maintain consular relations with Cuba, despite a deep row between the two countries in recent weeks.

On Tuesday, Batlle announced diplomatic ties with the Caribbean nation would be broken after a war of words between Cuban President Fidel Castro and the Uruguayan head of state.

The Cuban ambassador to Uruguay was later told to leave in 72 hours. However yesterday, Batlle told reporters that consular relations would continue. "We aren't going to ask any other country to look after our concerns," Batlle said. The souring of relations started in the run-up to a U.N. vote on Cuba's human rights record, sponsored by Uruguay.

The resolution invited the communist-run country to provide its people with greater civil and political rights. It also exhorted Cuba to allow a U.N. representative to visit the island ? an idea Havana rejected.

The resolution was eventually passed April 19 by the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva, by a tight 23-21 with nine abstentions.

That caused Castro to label Batlle "a lackey" of the United States. On Monday he said the president was a "hungover, abject Judas who presides over Uruguay." Batlle cut ties the next day, complaining that insults by Cuban leaders "continued to escalate in tone" to the point that Uruguay was forced to act. "The rupture will remain until it is clear that the Cuban people have peace and liberty," Batlle said at a news conference.

Diplomatic relations between Uruguay and Cuba were restored in 1986, a year after the end of 12 years of right-wing military-dictatorship in Uruguay that had interrupted ties. Nor is Uruguay the only Latin American nation whose ties with Cuba are under heavy strain.

Relations between Cuba and Mexico plunged to one of their lowest points in 100 years of diplomacy when Castro aired a tape recording that he said made Mexican President Vicente Fox sound like a liar.

Both sides, however, have insisted that relations will not be severed.