Obama sent a USA diplomat to deliver a note to Cuban President Raul Castro expressing a willingness to restore diplomatic ties, according to CNN.
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The mail situate a get together of July 20 for your re-establishment of carnal knowledge, and diplomatic missions is likely to be opened up afterward or later.
“When the United States shuttered our embassy in 1961, I don’t think anyone thought it would be more than half a century before it reopened”.
The president said the controversial move would allow the United States to have more influence over its ex- enemy and he urged Congress to go a step further by lifting the US embargo on the island. Obama hasn’t decided whether to nominate an ambassador in the immediate future or keep it operating under DeLaurentis as charge d’affaires, an administration official said Wednesday.
Now that embassies have opened up in both the United States and Cuba, the Havana Film Festival observes that U.S, European and Latin American filmmakers and producers are taking interest in the country as a blooming hotspot for development and production.
The move has already been hailed as a step towards an eventual end of the US blockade of Cuba.
Despite that, many in the exile community, which left in Cuba something more than its heart, its family and its heritage, today see Obama as a traitor who has raised the white flag before an oppressive regime that has “50 years of dictatorship and human rights violations” behind it.
Since the late 1970s, the United States and Cuba have operated interests sections in each other’s capitals that are technically under the protection of Switzerland and don’t enjoy the same status as embassies. In May, Cuba announced that its banking services for that office had been restored, a precondition to reopening a full embassy.
Fellow exile Victor Gomez, who served with the USA military in Vietnam, admits that “what was done to try and topple that man (Fidel Castro) didn’t work”, and now he is “happy” that they are trying to work things out in another way.
Republicans and Democrats in Congress have collaborated on legislation to relax the most onerous elements of the embargo, starting with a travel ban. Cargill chairs the USA Agricultural Coalition for Cuba (USACC), a partnership of almost 100 prominent USA agricultural associations, state groups and businesses committed to normalizing trade with Cuba. In recent weeks, they have used the government’s annual must-pass spending bills as vehicles for a number of measures to tighten restrictions on Cuba, including language limiting American exports and barring American vessels from Cuban airports and seaports.
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Michael R. Gordon contributed reporting from Vienna.
