ROME, Italy.- The First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, arrived in Rome after 2:00 p.m. this Monday (local time), where he next begins the accompanying delegation Visit program that includes the Holy See, Italy and Serbia.
The head of state was dismissed by Army General Raúl Castro Ruz at around 10:00 p.m. this Sunday at Havana’s José Martí International Airport. Minutes before the plane took off, the dignitary posted on his official Twitter social network account: “We will visit Vatican City State, the Italian Republic and the Republic of Serbia.”
“Certainly,” he added, “these will be intense days in which we will work to further promote and diversify our relationship in order to advance Cuba’s development.”
The President, together with his wife Lis Cuesta Peraza, was received at the city’s Leonardo Da Vinci Airport with a red carpet and a guard of honor on either side by the Minister’s Plenipotentiary, His Excellency Umberto Vanni D’Archirafi. Ambassador to the Chancellery, rank under Italian protocol for receiving Presidents.
The Cuban delegation includes, among others, Politburo member and Minister of External Relations, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, several Deputy Ministers of this portfolio and First Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, Ana Teresita González Fraga. .
The Havana-Rome flight lasted just over ten hours and the route was 5,214 kilometers long. Temperatures are high in the Italian capital, although not as high as those indicated by thermometers across Cuba these days.
Photo: Alejandro Azcuy.
INTENSE DAYS
A private meeting with Pope Francis is on President Díaz-Canel’s agenda for this Tuesday.
He will also hold a meeting with Italian President Sergio Mattarella and pay a courtesy visit to the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Mr. QU Dongyu.
This is the third visit by a Cuban President to the Holy See: Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz was received by Pope Saint John Paul II in November 1996, and Army General Raúl Castro Ruz met Pope Francis in May 2015.
This will be the fourth contact between Díaz-Canel and His Holiness Francisco, the first of which took place in March 2013 when the Cuban President and then First Vice-President of the Councils of State and Ministers attended his enthronement as Pope; in September 2015 on the occasion of Francis’ apostolic visit to Cuba and in February 2016 during the meeting between the Pope and the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill in Havana.
The historic and stable relations between Cuba and Italy and the desire to further deepen bilateral relations are reaffirmed at the meeting between Presidents Díaz-Canel and Mattarella.
Official relations between the two countries were established on February 4, 1903. Italy is among Cuba’s top ten trading partners and has maintained a historic position against the United States’ economic, trade and financial blockade of the Greater Antilles; Since 1995, she has supported the decision of the United Nations General Assembly to put an end to this unilateral action.
Photo: Alejandro Azcuy.