As the United Nations kicked off its annual six-week meeting of the commission on Human Rights in Geneva, Cuban-American leaders and European representatives convened in Washington yesterday to discuss the international community’s response to Fidel Castro’s human-rights abuses, and to debate what some are labeling the European Union’s recent appeasement of the Cuban dictator.

At a conference sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute – on “Regime Change in Cuba: the European Perspective” – Luxembourg’s ambassador to America, Arlette Conzemius, and the political counselor at the Embassy of Spain, Juan Jose Buitrago de Benito, articulated and attempted to defend the E.U.’s decision in January to engage in “constructive dialogue” with the Castro regime. Luxembourg currently holds the E.U. presidency; Ms. Conzemius acted as the president’s representative at the conference. Spain, given its cultural, linguistic, and historical ties to the island, has traditionally led the E.U. on Cuba policy.

It was Spain, under the leadership of socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, that pushed for the E.U. in January, in response to complaints by Mr. Castro, to scaled down outreach to the Cuban opposition begun under Mr. Zapatero’s predecessor, Jose Maria Aznar. After the Cuban dictator cracked down on advocates of freedom on the island in March 2003, the E.U. responded by terminating visits by high-level diplomats to Cuba, and by inviting dissidents to celebrations of national holidays at its embassies in Havana.

National-holiday celebrations afforded access to the international community, thereby giving the dissidents greater exposure and “a measure of respectability,” according to the executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, Frank Calzon, who also participated in the conference. This exposure irritated Mr. Castro to the point that he declared a freeze on Cuba’s relations with Europe, Mr. Calzon said.

That “freeze” thawed in January after Spain’s push to end the dissident invitations and restore high-level diplomatic ties with the Cuban regime. Conference participant, Latin America expert, and AEI scholar emeritus Mark Falcoff attributed much of the push by the Zapatero government and its sympathizers to anti-Americanism. While both the left and the right in Spain have traditionally had an affinity for Mr. Castro’s regime, Mr. Falcoff said. Spain is also one of the most deeply invested countries in Cuba, Mr. Falcoff said, which has led observers to speculate that Spain’s leniency toward Mr.Castro is the result of succumbing to economic blackmail.

Another conference participant, Maria Werlau, the president of the Free Society Project, estimated that Cuba has accumulated debt of around $5 billion from short- and medium-term credit obtained from foreign pro-Castro governments – “a revolving door of useful idiots” – in the years following its 1986 default on tens of millions of dollars in long-term loans. After the conference, Ms. Werlau told The New York Sun that she estimated Cuba’s short-term debt to Spain at $919 million, on top of long-term credits, which she said probably totaled close to $800 million.

At the conference, she explained that countries that decide to invest in Cuba face high risk, because it is unproductive to attempt capitalistic enterprise in a country with a communist economy. Furthermore, Ms. Werlau said, once governments extend credit to Mr. Castro, the dictator insists on “normalizing relations” at a political level before he will begin to pay back debt.

This, she explained, was a reason for America to maintain its embargo on Cuba: Limiting the ability of the government and U.S. companiesto conduct business with Mr. Castro protects them from the risk of financial blackmail.

The question of the embargo was also disputed at the conference, even among those against Mr. Castro’s regime. “The embargo is absolutely not working,” Mr. Falcoff said, “because the regime hasn’t changed.”

Mr. Calzon, however, argued that “the embargo is not what it used to be,” and that it is unfair to assess it as one consistent policy that has failed over the entirety of Mr. Castro’s rule. Now, “American companies can sell to Cuba on a cash-and-carry basis,” Mr. Calzon said. Still, he said, it is important that American parties not be permitted to extend credit to the dictator. Given his defaults on loans from other countries, Mr. Castro is holding out hope that the American embargo will be lifted and that he will receive a monetary lifeline from what Ms. Werlau called the regime’s “last oxygen tank.”

Aside from the financial concerns, both Mr. Calzon and Ms. Werlau said the embargo had important symbolic value. Coupling the embargo with efforts to support dissidents – especially helping establish an infrastructure for a transition to democracy once Mr. Castro dies – is vital, they said. “The president ought to order the bureaucracy to really get TV Marti into Cuba,” Mr. Calzon said, likening it to Radio Free Europe before the fall of the Soviet bloc.

Ms. Werlau said that letting New Europe take the lead in setting E.U. Cuba policy would also be an important measure. The Czech Republic and its former president, Vaclav Havel, have been vocal in standing against Mr. Castro in the European Union. When Spain pushed for a permanent and complete normalization of relations with Cuba in January, the Czechs succeeded in limiting the agreement to a six-month trial period, and in getting E.U. nations to agree to increase meetings with dissidents as they restored high-level diplomatic contacts. Another conference participant, Tomas Pojar, is the director of the Czech human-rights and humanitarian-aid organization People in Need, which has worked extensively in Cuba. Because of the Czechs’ own experience with communism, they are especially sensitive to the plight of Cuba, Mr. Pojar said, adding that he was “ashamed of what Europe has been doing recently.” He termed the E.U. dispute a “Spanish-Czech battle.”

Which side will win that battle will not be known until July, when the E.U. assesses whether the current arrangement has brought about improvement in the Cuban regime. In the meantime, Cuba’s foreign minister, Felipe Perez Roque, has engaged in widespread lobbying (including with Spain’s king, Juan Carlos) to prevent censure by the U.N. Human Rights Commission, in which an alliance of nations with records of human-rights abuses – Cuba, Sudan, and China, for example – has often succeeded in blocking censure resolutions. America announced today that while it will not seek a resolution condemning China at this year’s meeting, it will push for a censure of Cuba.

This, said Mr. Calzon, will focus world attention on a public meeting of the Cuban opposition set for May 20. The response of the Castro regime to the meeting – and whether further actions are taken against dissidents – will play an important role in determining the E.U.’s position in July, Mr. Calzon said.