Havana - Mexico and Cuba have ended their years of frozen relations and declared not only are they "fully normalized" but they also plan close bilateral and international cooperation. Cuban President Raul Castro has invited his Mexican counterpart, Felipe Calderon, to visit Cuba, the foreign ministers of both countries said Thursday night at the end of their meeting in Havana.
Calderon has worked since his inauguration in December 2006 to normalize relations, which have historically been warm between the two nations but turned chilly under his predecessor Vicente Fox, who criticized former Cuban president Fidel Castro.
"Relations between Mexico and Cuba are fully normalized," Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa said ahead of Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque's visit to Mexico in September, when he is to formally present Cuba's invitation to Calderon.
Perez Roque announced that Cuba would support Mexico's bid to take up one of the 10 rotating seats on the 15-member UN Security Council at the next UN General Assembly meeting.
Both diplomats also agreed their countries would work together on migration, drug trafficking and economic exchanges.
Raul Castro, who took over the presidency from his brother last month, has made it a priority to lead Cuba out of underdevelopment. He has sought to improve relations with Latin America's economic powerhouses of Brazil and Mexico so Cuba would no longer be dependent on Venezuela, which has supported Cuba financially for years.
As part of Espinosa's visit to Cuba, she and Perez Roque agreed that Mexico would soon send a large business delegation to Cuba.
The agreements and Espinosa's visit came after Fox, who in 2000 became the first opposition politician to be elected president in 80 years, criticized Cuba's human rights record, met with Cuban dissidents in Havana and was charged with urging Fidel Castro to leave a UN summit in Mexico before US President George W Bush arrived there.
For his part, Fidel Castro accused Fox of being a puppet of the US administration, and relations between the two countries hit a low when they temporarily withdrew their ambassadors in May 2004.
