“Secretary Kerry’s visit is especially insulting for Cuba’s dissidents”, said Jeb Bush, a Republican candidate for next year’s U.S. presidential election.
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Kerry then stood back and watched as the three now-retired Marine guards who lowered the flag to close the embassy 54 years ago handed it over to on-duty Marines, who raised it again for the first time since.
In doing so, Kerry said, they had “made a courageous decision to stop being the prisoners of history and to focus on the opportunities of today and tomorrow”.
While reiterating Cuba’s desire to normalise ties with the US on the basis of respect and equality, Rodriguez expressed his conviction that “beyond the differences between our governments, which will obviously not disappear, it is possible to build civilized and productive relations”.
“Like many other governments in and outside this hemisphere, we will continue to urge the Cuban government to fulfill its obligations under the UN and Inter-American human rights covenants, obligations shared by the United States and every other country in the Americas”, he said.
The two countries formally restored diplomatic ties on July 20, when Rodriguez attended the opening of the Cuban embassy in Washington.
President Barack Obama also called for change in Cuba when he announced the new U.S. policy of engagement in December, but his words were less pointed than Kerry’s on Friday.
While the Cuban American population in Philadelphia is relatively small, there is one more flag ceremony that many would like to see, on the on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway where the Cuban flag is noticeably missing.
Instead, Castro noted the damages suffered by the Washington-imposed embargo on Cuba and the 70 anniversary since the atomic bombings of Japan by the US. “None of them were invited to this event”, he told Fox News. “In May, the U.S. dropped Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism”, NBC News reports. The Heat continued its discussion.
Cuba wants the US to end its economic embargo of the island, return the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in eastern Cuba and halt radio and television signals beamed into Cuba.
“It’s a low-profile reception with speeches and that kind of thing”. The Obama administration hopes it inaugurates an era of political reform for the island nation.
The U.S. and Cuba severed relations in 1961, two years after Castro seized power.
Josefina Vidal, Cuba’s head negotiator in the ongoing talks with the United States, was the highest-ranking Cuban official at the ceremony, and Kerry was not scheduled to meet with Raul Castro or his ailing older brother, revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.
Cuba says the embargo has cost it $116 billion.
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Like Obama, Kerry said the longtime U.S. strategy of trying to isolate Cuba and provoke regime change by choking off trade and fomenting grass-roots agitation had failed.
