The Cuban dictator has been invited by Caricom as a special guest - despite global condemnation of his recent mass imprisonment of dissidents - along with South African president Thabo Mbeki.

The Department of Communication & Information confirmed yesterday that the Premier would be attending the summit, to be held in Montego Bay from July 2 to 5.

Bermuda will become an associate member of Caricom as soon as the paperwork is in place and that is expected to happen within weeks.

Also attending the meeting will be chief of staff Senator David Burch and assistant Cabinet secretary Keneth Dill, who has been designated Bermuda's national co-ordinator of the Caricom 30th anniversary celebrations.

Any meeting between the Premier and Castro is sure to add fuel to the controversy that has sparked fierce debate in the House of Assembly in recent weeks.

The row has largely centred on this newspaper's revelation last month that the Government had been working on drawing up a memorandum of understanding on cultural matters with Castro's Communist regime.

To do that, the Government needed permission from the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office, permission which was granted in April.

But after the European Union, of which Britain is a member, last week condemned Cuba for its "continuing flagrant violation of human rights and of fundamental freedoms of members of the Cuban opposition and of independent journalists" and agreed to cut high-level government visits and participation in cultural events, the FCO said it would take a "closer look" at the Bermuda memorandum.

The EU action followed the sentencing in April of 75 activists to prison terms ranging from six to 28 years on charges of being mercenaries working with American diplomats in Cuba to subvert the island's socialist system. Both the dissidents and US officials deny the allegations.

In addition three men, who had tried to hijack ferries to escape the Caribbean island, were executed by firing squad.

Transport Minister Dr. Ewart Brown visited Cuba recently and had talks with Cuban transport officials aimed at giving away Bermuda's old buses.

And Dr. Brown has also expressed hopes that old cars and ferries could be sold to Cuba and that Cuba's national airline may use Bermuda as a hub for its Europe-bound flights.

In April, Tourism and Telecommunications Minister Ren?e Webb was in Cuba to see a cultural exchange involving musicians from both islands.

US Consul General Denis Coleman told the last month that he was "perplexed" at why Bermuda should try to forge links with a country that oppressed its own people.

Last week, human rights watchdog Amnesty International called for the immediate release of the 75 incarcerated dissidents it described as "prisoners of conscience".

An Amnesty International report stated that those rounded up by the Cuban Government had mostly been "mid-level leaders of the dissident movement who had been active for a decade or more".

The report added: "They were subjected to hasty and unfair trials, and, just weeks after their initial arrest, were given long prison terms of up to 28 years. Cuban authorities tried them under harsh, previously unused legislation." On the three executed hijackers, the Amnesty report said: "They were subjected to a summary trial and appeals process and were executed less than a week after their trial began."

And there are claims that there is a racial element to Castro's oppression. All three hijackers, who were trying to flee to the US, were black.

A column by Manuel J. Coto published in the stated: "The word on the streets is that Castro referred to them as "tres negritos" (three little blacks). Even if you ignore the alleged racism (which I won't), the hijackers committed the crime of wanting freedom."

The Association of Black Cubans in Miami held a protest on May 10 at the Florida city's Bayfront Park to protest the executions.

Protesters there complained while Castro's Government was 100 per cent white, the pro-democracy movement included thousands of blacks and they claimed that 80 per cent of Cuba's prison population was black.

One of those is Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, who has been repeatedly detained in recent years and who was sentenced to 25 years in jail during the latest crackdown.

Dr. Biscet, founder of the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights, is reportedly now being held in solitary confinement.

Meanwhile, yesterday a former political prisoner in Cuba spoke at the United Nations building in New York and called for countries around the world to denounce Castro's crackdown on dissidents and try to prevent "a greater tragedy in Cuba".

Ramon Colas, one of the Cuban dissidents and former political prisoners invited to meet US President George W. Bush at the White House on May 20, said Castro's crackdown had not ended.

"Now others are being arrested," he told a news conference sponsored by the UN Correspondents Association. "We're knocking on all doors to plead to the world to help us so that we can avoid a greater tragedy in Cuba."

Colas said Castro wants to create the idea that this is a dispute with the United States stemming from the 1961 US trade embargo - but he said the real problem was "the embargo that Fidel Castro has against his own people".

"We hope others follow the European Union's decision to condemn the Cuban government," he said. "We have to take this bilateral dispute and make it a multilateral conflict."

Cuba this week accused the 15-nation EU of "kowtowing to the United States" by adopting a tough new policy against the Castro Government.

Yesterday President Castro led hundreds of thousands of Cubans in a Government-organised march outside the Spanish Embassy to protest what he sees as Europe's alignment with US policies towards the communist island.

Surrounded by security men and his closest aides, the 76-year-old Castro led a river of people past the white, colonial Spanish mission. The demonstration lasted about two hours but Castro stayed for only about ten minutes.