MEXICO CITY – The Mexican government said President Felipe Calderon and Cuban counterpart Raul Castro are interested in strengthening bilateral ties and overcoming a spat last month in which the former canceled a planned visit to the communist-ruled island.

In a statement on Friday, the Foreign Relations Secretariat, or SRE, said Calderon on Monday received Mexico’s ambassador to Cuba, Gabriel Jimenez Remus, who days earlier had met in Havana with Castro.

In his meeting with the Cuban leader, Jimenez conveyed a fraternal message from Calderon and the two men also discussed various items on the nations’ bilateral agenda, the SRE said.

For his part, Castro “expressed his respect for President Calderon, as well as his admiration for the struggle his government is leading against organized crime,” the SRE’s statement read.

Castro was referring to Calderon’s decision to deploy tens of thousands of army soldiers and federal police nationwide to crack down on brutal drug cartels. More than 10,000 have died in recent years in the cartels’ battles among each other and against authorities trying to dismantle their drug-smuggling outfits.

“In their respective meetings with Ambassador Jimenez Remus, both presidents agreed on the importance of strengthening bilateral relations,” the statement concluded, without adding further details.

The decision by Castro’s government in April to suspend flights between the two countries over the outbreak of the AH1N1 flu virus in Mexico sparked bilateral tensions.

Cuban authorities eventually decided to resume the flights on June 1.

After the suspension of the flights, Fidel Castro, who formally ceded power last year to his younger brother due to illness, wrote several articles accusing Mexican authorities of having covered up the outbreak of the new flu due to U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to that country in April.

Calderon’s government denied the accusation, complained about the suspension of flights and canceled the visit the conservative president had planned to make to the island in the spring.

The Mexican president’s visit to Cuba was meant to reaffirm a thawing in bilateral relations. Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa had already traveled to Cuba last year to jumpstart bilateral ties.

In 2004, then-President Vicente Fox withdrew Mexico’s ambassador to Cuba and expelled Cuba’s top diplomat after accusing the communist-ruled island of meddling in the country’s internal affairs.

Tensions between the two countries had begun two years earlier, when Fox asked then-Cuban leader Fidel Castro to cut short his visit to a U.N. gathering in Monterrey, Mexico to avoid crossing paths with U.S. President George W. Bush.