Baton Rouge-Gov. Kathleen Blanco never planned to meet with Cuban President Fidel Castro on her trip to the Caribbean island, but had lunch with the dictator to avoid offending him, a Blanco spokeswoman said Monday.Officials with the state Republican Party attacked the Democratic governor over the weekend for meeting with Castro during her three-day trade mission to the communist country. Roger Villere, chairman of the state GOP, said Saturday that the meeting was “an insult to our foreign policy and the president of the United States.”

Denise Bottcher, a Blanco spokeswoman, said the governor received the invitation from a Cuban government official during a tour of a church in Old Havana on Thursday. She met with Castro at a convention hall, as did other Louisiana officials on the trip, including two Republican lawmakers: Sen. Ken Hollis of Metairie and Sen. Robert Barham, of Oak Ridge, she said.

“The governor never requested the meeting with (Castro) and did not think it was important in order to do business,” Bottcher said. “But by the time the request was made for her to meet with him, she felt she didn’t want to slight him in any way, because two contracts had already been signed for millions of dollars.”

Blanco clinched a deal to sell $15 million in food products from Louisiana to the Cuban government in the next year.

A 2000 law created an exception to long-standing U.S. trade sanctions against Cuba, allowing American farm goods to be sold to the island for cash. Cuba has contracted to buy more than $1 billion in American farm goods-including shipping and hefty bank fees to send payments through third nations-since first taking advantage of the law in 2001.