In his 10-hour visit to Havana, Kerry will also hold diplomatic talks and a joint news conference with Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez.
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The Obama administration has continued to take issue with Cuba’s human rights record and has said the resumption of relations will better allow it to make progress on the issue.
Cuban-American poet Richard Blanco, who read a poem at US president Barach Obama’s second inauguration, was to read a new work before three marines who lowered the flag at the embassy’s closing in 1961 return to raise the Stars and Stripes again. These dissidents are opposed to the one-party political system of Cuba.
“On the basis of mutual respect and equality, and on the precondition that Cuba’s independence and sovereign integrity will not be encroached upon and its internal affairs will not be interfered in, our government has the full will to normalize relations with the United States“.
It seemed that virtually all of Cuba was glued to a television or listening to a live radio broadcast on a cellphone.
“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.
Kerry will only be in Cuba for 12 hours, but he said that he plans to walk around Old Havana at least once during his stay. They cheered as Kerry spoke, the United States Army Brass Quintet played “The Star-Spangled Banner” and U.S. Marines raised the flag outside the building, which overlooks the famous Malecon seaside promenade.
Thousands of Cubans gathered outside of the embassy, some holding American and Cuban flags together as they celebrated the historic occasion.
Four weeks ago US and Cuba renewed their diplomatic relations formally.
But Kerry insisted the breakdown in ties and the US trade embargo on the island had failed to force Cuba to reform-and that a new path must be sought.
Thale says the opening of the U.S. embassy in Cuba is a nice gesture – “kind of like popping the cork of the champagne right after the contract has been signed”.
The government said there was limited room at the ceremony, but Kerry would meet with them later in the day. He is also a former governor of Florida, home to the biggest Cuban emigre population.
But unresolved sources of tension include the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay and Cuba’s treatment of the media, activists and dissidents.
A senior State Department official told reporters that the administration planned to press Cuba to pay Cuban-Americans and American companies for property and assets expropriated after the 1959 revolution.
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The move is a recognition that decades of isolation did not lead to a democratic transition in Cuba, Kerry said, and called for “a genuine democracy” in Cuba while acknowledging the latest diplomatic move will not result in an immediate transformation of the communist island.
