5 More Cubans Seek Refuge at Spanish Embassy in Havana

Five more Cubans sought refuge at the Spanish Embassy in Havana on Friday, including a couple carrying an infant who slipped in during a scuffle between desperate asylum-seekers and Spanish and Cuban police.

The incident at the heavily guarded Embassy in downtown Old Havana took place while Spain’s ambassador to Cuba, Arturo Serrano de Haro, was meeting Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Jose Viera in a bid to defuse a deepening dispute over four refugees already at the embassy, an embassy spokesman said.

Serrano was expected to leave for Madrid Friday evening after being recalled by his government for consultations over the row.

The embassy spokesman said that just after midday Friday two Cubans in their early 20s managed to elude police and clamber over the embassy’s back wall.

At that point, a group of five more asylum-seekers rushed the main door, which was guarded on the inside by a member of a four-strong special Spanish police unit sent from Madrid to protect the embassy.

The spokesman cited witnesses as saying the two who failed to reach the front door were roughly dragged away by Cuban police.

The incident occurred as a war of words between Havana and Madrid intensified Friday when the official Communist Party newspaper Granma published a full-page inside display setting out Cuba’s position in its week-old quarrel with Madrid over asylum-seekers.

Cuba has said it will not allow any asylum seekers at foreign embassies to leave. Four young Cubans are also sheltering at the Italian ambassador’s residence in Havana.