MADRID, Spain – Spain's prime minister accepted an invitation to visit Cuba next year, the foreign minister said Tuesday, setting him up to become the first European leader to travel to the communist-run island in nearly a decade.

Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialist government has played a key role in persuading the EU to lift diplomatic sanctions against Cuba, a step taken in June, and in pressing the island to improve its human rights record.

The sanctions were imposed in 2003 after Cuba jailed 75 dissidents. Twenty have since been released, but more than 200 dissidents are still serving jail terms in Cuba.

Details of Zapatero's trip still needed to be worked out but it will go ahead, Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said. The announcement was made after he met with his Cuban counterpart in Madrid.

Zapatero later told reporters “there is a proposal. It's a project that's out there and we'll see when the time comes if it is carried out and how it is carried out.”

A government spokesman, however, insisted Zapatero was not throwing doubt on the possibility of the visit but simply saying it was not known when exactly it would happen.

The last time a European head of state or government visited Cuba was during the Ibero-American Summit held in Havana in November 1999. It was attended by King Juan Carlos and then-Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, as well as Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio.

Then-Russian President Vladimir Putin made an official visit to Cuba the following year.

Since then, other officials have traveled to the island over the years. European Commissioner Louis Michel will visit Cuba next week, his third trip in the past decade.

Moratinos said Spain was satisfied with Cuba's advances in human rights. Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said he hoped a meeting Thursday with EU representatives in Paris will mark the beginning of improved relations.

“We believe a start to dialogue between the EU and Cuba is possible,” Perez Roque said. “We are putting the final touches to the basis for an agreement.”

In Tuesday's talks, Spain also agreed to fund a two-year, euro24.5 million (US$34 million) program to help Cuba rebuild homes, schools and other structures destroyed by Hurricanes Gustav and Ike this summer, Moratinos said.

Spain has also agreed to restructure part of Cuba's euro1.5 billion ($2.1 billion) debt with the Spanish government, and open up a new line of credit worth euro50 million ($69 million) to euro100 million ($138 million), Moratinos said.

Perez Roque said the damage caused by the hurricanes over eight days was almost comparable to the economic losses caused by the U.S. embargo in a year. He said 63,000 houses and third of the country's agricultural land had been destroyed and put damages at some $5 billion over eight days.