Report, Embassy of Hungary in Cuba to the Hungarian Foreign Ministry

[…] in the Cuban press no news has been published about the Sino-Soviet debate in general and about the Chinese events that occurred in recent months. Both the radio and the dailies failed to report even about the atrocities that had affected the socialist embassies, primarily the embassy of the Soviet Union, in Beijing. Reports of news agencies appeared only in the confidential information bulletin published by the Cuban party’s Department for Agitation and Propaganda.

It is because of the aforesaid that one can consider surprising the fact that the Cubans not just consented to the organizing of a press conference by the Korean press correspondent to Havana but also gave full publicity to it. The material of the press conference was identical with that of the Korean press conference organized in Algeria, which had been, to my knowledge, the first of this kind. Its subject was the condemnation of the Chinese accusations against the Koreans.

Thus this was the sole occasion when the Cuban political trend disregarded the actual news blackout.

This fact sheds light upon the strength of the Cuban-Korean contacts […]. Due to these contacts, the Cuban party could not prohibit the organization of the conference. Concerning that this was quite embarrassing for the Cubans, I have information from fraternal press correspondents that in the last moment the Koreans transferred the conference, which had been otherwise announced to be held in the Havana Libre Hotel, to their embassy. The unstated reason for this was that the conference should not take place on „Cuban territory” after all.

During a conversation with me, the Korean ambassador of this place mentioned that at the embassy there was more room available and this is why the press conference had been organized there. (The Havana Libre Hotel is Havana’s biggest skycraper, with halls that can hold several thousand people.)

                                                                                                                         Lőrinc Soós

                                                                                                                         ambassador