By Pascal Fletcher
HAVANA, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Cuba, which held rare talks this week with the Paris Club group of Western creditors, seems receptive to the idea of a multilateral rescheduling of its foreign debt, a source close to the talks said on Thursday.
But he added that the communist-ruled island and its $3.5 billion debt to Paris Club members represented a "special case" that would require "special treatment" within the group.
"If we came to an agreement with Cuba it would not be an ordinary Paris Club agreement," said the source, who spoke to Reuters on condition he was not identified.
Paris Club chairman Francis Meyer and colleagues from Japan and Germany had closed-door meetings in Havana on Monday with Cuba's Vice-President Carlos Lage and Central Bank president Francisco Soberon. In an unusual move for the Paris Club, such high-level talks took place in the debtor country.
"The Cubans were ready to meet with them and to listen," the source said, adding that the Paris Club team outlined conditions for a possible future debt rescheduling deal.
"They had no major objections," the source added, although he declined to give details of what the Paris Club terms were.
He also declined to say when the two sides would meet again. "They will stay in contact," he said.
This week's talks were described by the source as "the most positive" so far between Cuba and the Western creditors' group.
The two sides reopened exploratory contacts last year, with meetings in Paris in September and December. Until then, there had been virtually no contact since 1986, when Havana halted repayment of most of its debt with these creditors.
The source said Cuba's case offered several distinctive problems but he did not believe any posed an unsurmountable obstacle to a possible multilateral rescheduling accord.
One potential snag was Cuba's outstanding debt to Russia, which Moscow inherited from the former Soviet Union.
This Cuban debt, which is separate from the $3.5 billion owed to other Paris Club members, has been estimated by Russian officials in the past at $20 billion transferable roubles but no updated consolidated value has been agreed upon.
The source said that as Russia was now a fully fledged member of the Paris Club, this debt would also have to be solved, along with the other Cuban arrears, within the group.
"The situation between Russia and Cuba is very delicate because each has claims against the other ... the Russian problem has to be settled as part of a Paris Club accord."
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov visited Cuba this week but told reporters he had not discussed the debt question.
Another potentially prickly issue was the attitude of the United States, a Paris Club member which has sought to isolate President Fidel Castro's government economically through a 37- year trade embargo. In public, U.S. officials say Washington opposes any special treatment for Cuba in the Paris
Club.
But the source said the United States had so far not vetoed the idea of debt rescheduling talks with Cuba. "If they did, the Paris Club people wouldn't have gone to Cuba," he said.
"They (the Americans) know about it but they are not bothered by it," he added.
Another feature that would set Cuba apart from regular Paris Club reschedulings would be the absence of a linked International Monetary Fund (IMF) economic reform program.
Cuba has said it is ready to renegotiate its debt under "realistic" terms but will not accept reform recipes of the kind imposed by the IMF. Havana is not an IMF member.
17:16 09-30-99 |