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Historic US-Cuba talks open in Havana

January 21, 2015

Talks between the United States and Cuba have begun in Havana. US President Barack Obama had earlier urged Congress to end the decades-long embargo on the communist country in his annual State of the Union speech.

https://p.dw.com/p/1EOB6
Miniature flags representing Cuba and the US are displayed on the dash of an American classic car in Havana, Cuba (AP Photo/Franklin Reyes, File)
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/Franklin Reyes

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Alex Lee and Cuban foreign ministry official Josefina Vidal opened the first round of the two-day negotiations in the Cuban capital on Wednesday.

The talks are meant to lay the groundwork for the rapprochement announced simultaneously by US President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro last month.

While the first day of talks focused on migration issues, the diplomats of the two countries will discuss the reopening of embassies on Thursday. Roberta Jacobson, the US Assistant Secretary of State, will lead the second round of the historic talks. On arrival later on Wednesday, she will become the highest-ranking US official to visit Cuba since 1980.

Earlier this month, Cuba freed 53 political prisoners demanded by the US in a move to consolidate improved relations with Washington. Their release was agreed by Havana and Washington in December after President Obama announced the re-establishment of diplomatic ties with the communist nation, which had been cut off in 1961 during the Cold War.

High expectations from the talks

On the eve of the historic talks, Obama urged his country's Congress to lift the 54-year-old trade embargo against Cuba.

"In Cuba, we are ending a policy that was long past its expiration date," President Obama in his annual State of the Union speech on Tuesday. "When what you have done doesn't work for fifty years, it is time to try something new," he added.

The Associated Press news agency cited a senior Cuban official as saying the restoration of diplomatic ties between US and Cuba would not immediately lead to a normal relation between the Cold War foes.

The Cuban citizens, however, have hopes in the success of the talks.

"Things could change for the better, giving us a little more than what we normally have in the material and spiritual sense," Dayron Herrera, a 27-year-old Cuban artist told the AFP news agency.

shs/msh (AFP, AP)