The row over Bermuda's planned links with Cuba shows no signs of going away - no matter how much the Government would like it to.

The issue comes down in the end to one of human rights and whether Bermuda wishes to join those countries that, by having formal ties with Cuba, legitimise that country's well-documented human rights abuses.

Debates over what effect the arrangements would have on the Island's relations with the US, the sometimes dubious morality of the US's own foreign policy, and semantics over whether a memorandum of understanding on cultural matters is different from formal diplomatic arrangements are red herrings.

Fidel Castro's Cuba has chosen to pursue its own way in the world; does Bermuda as a Government and as a country want to support it or not?

Take away the palm trees and the sambas, and Cuba is no different from Romania or Russia before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

It does not hold free or fair elections, it has sentenced 75 dissidents to lengthy prison terms after show trials and it summarily executed by firing-squad three men who tried to hijack a Cuban ferry full of passengers.

These cannot be positions that Bermuda can support, any more than Bermuda could support South Africa's apartheid regime.

But by the Government - as opposed to private individuals - having business or formal cultural dealings with Cuba, that is exactly what it is doing. It is adding legitimacy to a regime that refuses to accept democracy or freedom of choice.

It may be that the current Government leadership - many of whom came of age at a time when Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were romantic figures - cannot separate their adolescent fantasies from today's realities. But the reality is that Cuba's government is increasingly out of step with moral norms and seems to be increasingly desperate to crush those Cubans who oppose it.

In those circumstances, when most of the world is backing from relations with Cuba, it makes no sense for Bermuda to be trying to expand them.