Cuba said Tuesday it was looking forward to closer cooperation with North Korea after "favorable" talks in Pyongyang.

The positive assessment of relations between the two communist-ruled states comes three weeks after the seizure in Panama of a North Korean cargo ship loaded with undeclared Cuban arms, including two MiG-21 fighter jets.

U.S. authorities plan to hold long-delayed hearings for dozens of detainees held at Guantanamo to decide if they still pose a threat to the United States, the Pentagon said Monday.

President Barack Obama had ordered the review boards back in March, 2011 but it has taken more than two years for U.S. government agencies to finally carry out the plan, prompting criticism from rights groups.

North Korea's foreign ministry said late Wednesday that Cuban arms seized from a Pyongyang-flagged ship in Panama's waters were part of a legitimate deal and demanded the immediate release of the ship, state media reported.

"This cargo is nothing but ageing weapons which are to be sent back to Cuba after overhauling them according to a legitimate contract," the Korea Central News Agency quoted the foreign ministry as saying, adding: "The Panamanian authorities should take a step to let the apprehended crewmen and ship leave without delay."

Cuba announced Tuesday that weapons found on a North Korean ship close to the Panama Canal were "obsolete" Soviet-era arms, which the communist island had sent to Pyongyang for repair.

The declaration came a day after Panama said it had found military equipment, which it believed to be missiles, after impounding the ship and conducting a drugs search.

Panama's president said Monday that a North Korean ship captain tried to kill himself after the vessel was stopped en route from Cuba and found to have suspected missile material on board.

Outlining a dramatic sequence of events, President Ricardo Martinelli said the ship was targeted by drug enforcement officials as it approached the Panama Canal and was taken into port, but a search revealed cargo of far greater concern.

Fugitive U.S. intelligence leaker Edward Snowden was staring at the logistical nightmare of escaping Russia for a safe haven in Latin America on Sunday after three leftist leaders offered him asylum in their states.

Bolivia on Saturday became the third country to extend an offer of asylum to the 30-year-old former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor sanctuary after similar guarantees from Venezuela and Nicaragua.

North Korea's army chief of staff said Friday in Havana his country is "in the same trench" as Cuba, local television reported.

General Kyok Sik Kim, who arrived a day earlier in the Americas' only Communist-run nation, said he was there "to find colleagues in the same trench: the Cuban comrades."

Cuban teacher Nancy Garcia would love to surf the Web at home. But since that is restricted in this communist country, she now logs on from new hotspots -- at a price few can afford.

"I don't stay long so as not to throw money out the window," said the 53-year-old as she checked her email near the Havana waterfront at one of the island's 118 new public access Internet points, open for several weeks now.

More than 150 doctors from the United States and Britain have written to President Barack Obama urging him to grant independent medical care to hunger-striking Guantanamo detainees.

The hunger strike, which began more than four months ago, is meant to protest the inmates' indefinite detention at the military facility even though more than half have been cleared for release.

A special envoy of Syrian President Bashar Assad met in Havana with Miguel Diaz-Canel, the number two man in government, Cuban state media said.

Diaz-Canel and the envoy, identified as Monhsen Bilal, exchanged thoughts about the Syrian conflict, according to a communique read late Wednesday on state TV news.