Diplomats from the US and Cuba said progress was made Friday during negotiations that aim to restore relations between the nations. Delegates discussed embassy openings, prisoner exchanges and Cuba’s place on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism.
US assistant secretary of state Roberta Jacobson, and Josefina
Vidal, chief of the Cuban foreign ministry’s US division, led the
respective
delegations in talks held in Washington throughout Friday
morning and afternoon. They followed the first round of
discussion held on January 22 in Havana.
During the meetings, Cuba pushed the US to remove it from its
list of state sponsors of terrorism, with Vidal saying the issue
is a “priority” for Cuba. She added to Reuters that it
would be “very
difficult to say that we have re-established relations with our
country still on a list that we believe very, very firmly that we
have never belonged to and we do not belong to.”
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Cuba-America reconciliation
However, Vidal stated that removal from the list is not a
precondition for renewing diplomatic ties with the US.
The Obama administration is reviewing Cuba’s place on the
terror-sponsor list – a designation established in 1982 for
Cuba’s aid to Marxist insurgencies – though to be removed from
it, the US Congress would have to approve the move. The US has
also stated that the issue of removing Cuba from the list should
not hold up other efforts to restore ties.
Meanwhile, Jacobson said the US is hoping to reach an agreement
with Cuba on reopening embassies by the Summit of the Americas in
April, where President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul
Castro could meet. Jacobson said the talks were “productive
and encouraging,” according to Reuters.
President Obama announced a new direction for
US-Cuba relations in December. Some travel and trade
restrictions between the two countries were lifted
last month.
However, the US economic and financial embargo against Cuba
largely remains in place since its inception in October 1960,
beginning shortly after Fidel Castro led a popular socialist
revolution, challenging US hegemony in the Western Hemisphere.
Previously, Cuba called for removal from the US list of state
sponsors of terror before any official normalization of
diplomatic relations. The designation, Cuba has argued, bars the
nation from doing business with certain banks which face punitive
fines or forfeitures for working with nations on the
terror-sponsor list.
President Castro reaffirmed
last month his nation’s willingness to normalize relations with
the US, but stressed that the embargo must first be lifted.
“The main problem has not been resolved: the economic,
commercial and financial blockade, which causes huge human and
economic damage and is a violation of international rights,”
Castro said at a Latin American summit in Costa Rica.
The Cuban president also noted that the US must return Guantanamo
– which has been under US control for over a century – to Cuba
before full rapprochement. The White House scoffed
at the request.
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“I think what [Castro’s] comments highlight is there are
pretty clear differences between establishing diplomatic
relations and carrying out the longer process of normalizing
relations,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest.
“There are a variety of concerns we have with the way the
Castro regime treats political dissidents, the way they treat
individuals who are trying to freely express their views, even
the way they treat some reporters.”
As for embassy functions, US officials say they are particularly
important, since they would allow US diplomats to move
unmitigated around Cuba and meet with anyone, including political
opponents of the Castros.
“Both of us have to come to the table in the spirit of
getting to an agreement on these things, and not putting so many
obstacles in the way that are not linked directly to how we
function as diplomats in each other’s countries,” a State
Department official said.
In mid-December, both Raul Castro and Obama announced during
concurrent news conferences that the two nations would try to
start anew after conflicting ideologies led to a split, then
sanctions, more than a half-century earlier.
“This is fundamentally about freedom and openness, and also
expresses my belief in the power of people-to-people
engagement,” Obama said of the policy change, adding that he
hopes such “contact will ultimately do more to empower the
Cuban people.”