(BRUSSELS) - The European Union is set next week to hold its first ministerial talks with Cuba since 2003, following the bloc's lifting of sanctions against Havana, European sources said Friday.

"There is a political agreement" for French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, his Czech counterpart Karel Schwarzenberg and EU Development Commissioner Louis Michel to meet with Cuba's Foreign Minister Perez Roque, an EU source told AFP.

The initiative follows the EU's lifting of sanctions in June against Cuba.

"The French (EU) presidency has sent an invitation to Cuba and Cuba has accepted. The agenda still needs to be set," said another source, citing the same time and place for the meeting.

The Czech minister, whose country was among the most opposed to the lifting of sanctions, will attend as his country will assume the EU's rotating presidency from France in January.

The French side said the meeting was "not confirmed" and that all the details of resuming EU-Cuba talks had not been sorted out.

EU-Cuba relations were frozen in 2003 when the EU imposed sanctions on the island nation in retaliation for the imprisonment of more than 70 dissidents, and the execution of three men convicted of hijacking a passenger ferry and demanding it be taken to the United States.

After a 2005 initiative from Spain to normalise relations, the EU moved definitively on June 19 to establish "political dialogue" and encourage changes carried out by Raul Castro's government.

Last month the Cuban government accepted the resumption of political dialogue with the 27-nation bloc.

The EU's requirements for the suspension of sanctions include an annual review of relations, "improvement of the human rights situation" and the "release of political prisoners, including detainees imprisoned in 2003."

The goal of such a meeting, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, said on September 30, would be to "definitively formalise the opening and the start of the political dialogue between Cuba and the EU."

Cuban dissidents have criticised the EU's move to normalise ties with Havana, arguing that the human rights situation in Cuba has not improved.

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