Havana - Cuba has reiterated its willingness to further expand its relations with the Caribbean Community, CARICOM.

Cuba-CARICOM Day, observed every December 8th, was marked Thursday in Havana with a ceremony chaired by the president of the island´s Parliament, Esteban Lazo, and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez.

During the event, Deputy Foreign Minister Rogelio Sierra reiterated the permanent position of Cuba to support the right of small island states and the most vulnerable economies to receive special and differentiated treatment in their access to trade and investment.

“We support this just claim to receive cooperation in correspondence with real needs and not on the basis of statistics that schematically describe our countries as middle income countries,” said Sierra.

For his part, Abdool Halim Majeed, ambassador of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana in Cuba, recalled that on December 8, 1972, his nation -- along with Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and Jamaica -- formally established diplomatic relations with Cuba, a step which broke the diplomatic isolation that the United States tried to impose on Cuba.

Cuba-CARICOM Day is celebrated since 2002 when the Havana Declaration was signed at the first joint summit to mark the establishment of diplomatic relations with Caribbean nations.