WASHINGTON – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff discussed with Cuba’s foreign minister the status of an American contractor detained in Cuba since December, the State Department said.

The meeting took place Wednesday in New York at the U.N.-sponsored Haiti donors conference, at which Cheryl Mills and Bruno Rodriguez talked chiefly about the efforts of reconstruction in the impoverished Caribbean nation after the Jan. 12 earthquake, though they also discussed other subjects of “mutual interest,” a State Department source told Efe.
At his daily press conference, department spokesman P.J. Crowley said that Mills and Rodriguez addressed the status of contractor Alan Gross, whom Cuba accuses of being a spy.
This is the second time in two months that Washington has dealt directly with Cuban authorities about the detention of the U.S. contractor.
Asked whether Mills also touched on the human rights situation in Cuba in light of ongoing hunger strikes by dissidents, Crowley said that the U.S. always discusses the matter in its conversations with Cuba.
Gross, 60, is an employee of Maryland-based Development Alternatives Inc., operating in Cuba under a contract with the U.S. Agency for International Development.
He was detained while distributing laptop computers, cellular phones and other communications equipment on the communist-ruled island.
In January, Cuban parliament speaker Ricardo Alarcon said Gross had been “hired by a firm (Development Alternatives Inc.) that has contracts with the U.S. secret services” as part of Washington’s “privatization of war.”

Cuban President Raul Castro said in a speech in December that the suspect had been “euphemistically” described by Washington as a government “contractor.”
Castro also said then that Gross was engaged in “the illegal supply of sophisticated communications equipment” to elements that Washington hopes will subvert Cuban society.
The U.S. government, however, has denied that Gross was associated with its intelligence services, while DAI says he was providing communications gear to Cuba’s tiny Jewish community, not to dissidents.
The United States and Cuba has resumed talks about migration matters and the postal service, and after the Haiti earthquake there has been some bilateral cooperation with regard to emergency aid for that country.
Clinton has previously thanked Cuba for allowing U.S. aircraft to enter Cuban air space with flights to evacuate Haiti’s homeless and bring aid to the devastated island.
Crowley said that Mills and Rodriguez concentrated on evaluating ways to make sure that U.S. and Cuban reconstruction efforts are carried out in line with the priorities established by the Haiti government and discussed the restoration of its health-care system. EFE