Cuba assured here that a strategic association between the European Union and Latin America and Caribbean will not sustain itself while the Old Continent does not treat its former colonies as equal partners.

The previous statement was made by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez before a plenary meeting of Foreign Ministers of both regions, before the 6th Summit of Heads of State EU-LAC to start today in the Spanish capital.

We will only find a common ground between our respective geographic areas with a greater political will of the European governments and their recognition, in facts and actions, of the historic debt they have with our peoples, warned Rodriguez.

The head of Cuban diplomacy referred to the first bi-regional meeting, celebrated in 1999 in Rio de Janeiro, where he recalled, reknowned European leaders proposed then the idea to establish that association between both continents.

Curiously, Europe came from participating in the NATO summit in which, in the face of global threats, a new doctrine was adopted consisting in considering Latin America and the Caribbean as "Euro-Atlantic periphery", stressed Rodriguez.

In 2004, continued the Cuban FM, at the summit meeting EU-LAC of Guadalajara (Mexico) there was no hope left of that dream of strategic unity.

Rodriguez explained, however, who nobody could blame the government or Foreign Ministry of Spain, in its hosting condition and current president of the EU, that this sixth edition of the bilateral forum does not render much fruit.

In fact, what separates us, fundamentally, is not the Atlantic Ocean, but our different nature, he said.

During his speech, the Cuban Foreign Minister illustrated that on the one side of the table were the former colonial powers and, on the other, those who suffered colonization and its consequences.

As a result, you are creditors and we the debtors, he stressed, after denouncing that the global economic crisis was generated in the developed countries, many of them European, while its effects now impact Latin America and the Caribbean.

From our nations travel emigrants to Europe, where they are exploited and discriminated, while the flows of trade and investment prove our resources keep on being extracted to finance the development of the EU, he said.

In his speech, the Minister said nobody can ask a Third World nation to sacrifice its development to advance toward a low-emitting carbon economy while there is a technological and digital gap between both regions.

He called on participants in the EU-ALC (27 Europeans and 33 Latin American and Caribbean nations) to not forget that poor countries deforestate in order to eat.

Cultivated Europe should understand its patterns of production and consumption are irrational and will lead to the planets destruction, assured the head of Cuban diplomacy, after warning that without equity and stability in this region there wont be in the long term prosperity in the old continent either.

We are all going to the abyss, although some may travel first-class and others in economic class, affirmed Rodríguez, who exhorted the new generations of Europeans to understand that Latin America is no longer the back yard of the United States.