In Washington, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez presided over a flag raising ceremony at Havana’s mission.
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President Obama received an awkward endorsement Monday as a crowd gathered outside the new Cuban embassy in Washington, D.C., chanted “Viva Raúl!”
While companies from JetBlue Airways to Airbnb have sought to capitalise on the improving relationship, differences over issues from human rights and democracy to the future of the USA naval base at Guantanamo Bay remain.
And while the theory has been for years that Cuba will have to compensate the United States for the property Cuba stole during the revolution in the early 1960s, Rodriguez said the USA must immediately pay Cuba compensation for the damages the embargo has caused its people.
History is being made in Washington today when Cuba raises its flag and officially reopens its U.S. Embassy after 54 years.
The Cuban flag was raised outside the embassy to applause and cheers of “Fidel Viva” and “Raoul Viva”.
Despite the resumption of full diplomatic relations, Washington and Havana continue to wrangle over a series of heated disputes, including the U.S.-imposed blockade against the island nation and Cuba’s human rights record. The statement reads, and added that the Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to Havana later this summer to celebrate the “rise of the flags”.
Republican presidential candidates have vowed not to repeal the embargo and have threatened to roll back Mr Obama’s promotion of closer ties between the two countries. But the White House has moved steadily to loosen the restrictions on lawful trade and travel under the USA embargo – and residents in Florida and elsewhere with large Cuban-American populations are taking advantage of the chance to see family and friends again.
Without fanfare in the pre-dawn hours, maintenance workers also hung the Cuban flag in the lobby of the US State Department, where it joined the banners of other countries with which the United States has diplomatic relations. But she was also thinking of her unborn baby, who will be an American citizen, and said she wants her child to grow up in a new era of cooperation and exchange. But Kerry said the road to normalizing relations between between the two nations may be “long and complex”.
Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.), a leading Democratic critic of Obama on foreign policy, said that by reopening embassies the Obama administration helps “validate the Castro regime’s brutal behavior, doubling down on a one-sided deal reopening of embassies”.
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Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro first announced on December 17 previous year that they would resume full diplomatic relations. On July 1, issues of American diplomats’ access to ordinary Cubans were resolved and the July 20 date was set for the restoration of full relations.
