BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – When the second CARICOM-Cuba Summit in three years gets underway at the Hilton Hotel here today, the extent of Cuba’s aid and the Community’s responses to “friendship consolidation” will be reviewed in the context of new challenges confronting old allies.

The United States 43-year-old economic, trade and financial embargo against Cuba, which has repeatedly been denounced by the United Nations General Assembly, has not prevented the Fidel Castro government from extending practical forms of assistance to developing nations in this and other regions.

Cuba’s aid packages to various sectors of the Caribbean Community over 32 years of diplomatic relations, have been quite significant, according to data obtained yesterday through its foreign ministry.

In health and education, for which Cuba has long been recognised by the United Nations as having a very impressive profile, the government of President Fidel Castro has made assistance available to Caricom countries over the past three decades.

A total of 2,114 nationals of the Community have gained professional qualifications in the fields of medicine, engineering, road and building construction, teaching, economics, health care and sports from Cuban universities.

In the meantime, there are currently 1,100 Cuban doctors and nurses serving in various Caricom states.

In July this year, Cuba inaugurated a new health initiative to assist Caricom with an eye-care programme through which 9,871 nationals of the Community have successfully benefited from eye surgeries.

Under this programme, which is continuing with additional assistance from Venezuela, patients are provided with free transportation to and from Cuba and accommodation with meals during the normally two-week duration for the eye-care treatment.

In the area of trade, expansion has moved from an estimated US$8 million in the early 1980s to US$56 million in 2004 with Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago being the major Caricom partners.

Improving trade relations as well as sporting and cultural links will be among matters to be addressed during today’s summit, the working sessions of which will be preceded with a formal opening at which President Castro will be one of the speakers.

When the Cuban leader touched down yesterday at Grantley Adams International Airport, it marked his 10th visit to the Caricom region since diplomatic ties were initially established between Havana and four Community states – Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.

Outside of the summit sessions, President Castro will be laying a wreath at the monument in St James parish dedicated by the Barbados Government of Prime Minister Owen Arthur to the 73 victims of the terrorist bombing of a Cuban passenger aircraft off the Barbados coast on October 6,1976.

Last evening the Cuban embassy in Barbados was scheduled to formally launch the recently published “Cuba, the Untold History”, that chronicles numerous accounts, with specific details, of terrorist attacks and other hostile activities launched against that Caribbean neighbour from the USA by anti-Castro forces.