Cuban First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel met with religious representatives of this country, at the headquarters of the Cuban Council of Churches (CIC), Granma newspaper reported today.

According to the daily, both sides expressed gratitude for the possibility of the event, where issues such as the defense of values, and the importance of family were highlighted.

Diaz-Canel insisted on the need not to see the prosperity only as economic development, and considered the material improvement does not automatically lead to the restoration of values.

The high official explained some issues of the updating of the economic model, and said the most difficult stage is now coming, because we need to eliminate monetary and exchange rate dualities, wage and price reform, and make the socialist state enterprise efficient.

Diaz-Canel also referred to two aspects in which the State and religious institutions can work together: a permanent dialogue to advance in issues of common interest, and moreover, to preserve the unity, a paradigm of the Cuban nation.

CIC President Joel Ortega stated that a prosperous and sustainable socialism must also be participatory, and recalled the CIC struggle for the return of Elian Gonzalez, kidnapped in the United States in 1999, and the release of the Cuban antiterrorist fighters unjustly held in that northern country.

The Five, "as they are internationally known," were detained in the United States in 1998, for monitoring violent groups from Miami operating against the Caribbean nation.

Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labañino, Fernando Gonzalez, and Antonio Guerrero are still serving long sentences, while Rene Gonzalez is in Cuba after completing more than 12 years in prison and then renounced his U.S. citizenship as a condition for his return to the island.

In a fraternal atmosphere, participants in the meeting raised their concerns related to issues such as youth, publications, institutional, and theological teaching.