HAVANA (Reuters) – Ricardo Alarcon, some of the highly effective males in Cuba underneath former President Fidel Castro and a key participant in relations with the United States, died in Havana on Saturday night, his household mentioned.
The former diplomat was one of many architects of the primary migratory dialogue between Washington and Havana in 1978, the 12 months through which negotiations additionally started with a bunch of representatives of the Cuban neighborhood within the United States.
Alarcon performed a key position in negotiating an immigration settlement with the United States that put an finish to an enormous exodus of Cubans by sea in 1994. He was additionally central in arranging the return of younger castaway Elian Gonzalez from kinfolk in Miami to his father in Cuba in 2000.
The cigar-puffing and rum-sipping Alarcon, invariably clad in a white guayabera, at one point turned the third strongest man within the nation’s Communist Party elite after Fidel and Raul Castro.
He was international minister between 1992 and 1993 after which served as president of the National Assembly for 20 years till he was faraway from the submit and the ruling political management.
No motive was given for Alarcon’s fall from grace, nonetheless his closest support, Miguel Alvarez, had been arrested the earlier 12 months for being a U.S. spy and it’s commonplace process in such instances to think about all contacts compromised.
Alarcon remained a loyal member of the Revolution regardless of his political downfall.
“To Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada, the Master of the diplomats of our technology, we are going to all the time have deep respect, admiration and infinite affection,” Deputy Foreign Minister Josefina Videl, Cuba’s lead negotiator with the administration of former U.S. President Barack Obama, tweeted on Sunday.
Alarcon was born on May 21, 1937. From a really younger age he participated within the July 26 Movement, the revolutionary group that overthrew U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959.
Alarcon then served as a frontrunner of the University Student Federation and later the Union of Young Communists, the youth arm of the ruling Communist Party.
During his years as head of Parliament, Alarcon performed an vital position within the island’s marketing campaign for the discharge of 5 Cuban intelligence brokers who had been sentenced to lengthy jail phrases within the United States for espionage.
(Reporting by Marc Frank; extra reporting by Nelson Acosta; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
