Cuba and the U.S. to Announce on Wednesday Opening of Embassies

HAVANA, Cuba, Jun 30 (acn) President Barack Obama will announce on Wednesday that the United States and Cuba reached an agreement to open their respective embassies in Washington and Havana, said a top official of the U.S. government, cited on Tuesday by Associated Press.

In a report dated in Washington that has had great worldwide repercussions, the agency refers that it has been planned that Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry will speak on Wednesday morning about the reopening of embassies and the formal reestablishment of diplomatic relations.
The official insisted on his wish to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly before the President.
Cuba and the United States have been negotiating the reopening of embassies since they announced in December they would take steps to reestablish diplomatic ties after half a century of enmity, recalls AP, cited by the big U.S. networks CNN, Univision and NBC.
In turn, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo reproduces a report by the British agency Reuters that confirms by way of several sources that President Barack Obama and Kerry -who is in Vienna during negotiations with Iran on the nuclear agreement- will announce the new step for the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with the island, interrupted more than 50 years ago.
The newspaper El Nuevo Herald in its online news site publishes the news with pictures of what will be the Cuban embassy in Washington, the current Interests Section, and acknowledges that this represents an important step towards ending hostilities between the Cold War enemies.
However, it points out that while the opening of embassies marks an important milestone in detente between Cuba and the United States, there are still significant outstanding issues pending on the road to the normalization of relations, citing among them the presence of what they call embargo, which is nothing but the economic, commercial and financial blockade the U.S. has maintained against the Caribbean nation for more than 50 years now.
For Obama, ending distancing with Cuba is a key element of his legacy in foreign policy. The president has long expressed the value of bilateral relations and has claimed that the U.S. trade embargo on the island located just 145 kilometers (90 miles) from Florida was not effective, reads the note.
The Mexican agency Notimex also refers that another source, that of the State Department, pointed out that a possible visit by Secretary Kerry to Havana in the near future is studied.
The United States and Cuba broke off diplomatic relations in 1961 and remained in contact at the level of Interests Sections, with the intercession of the Swiss Embassy in Washington and Havana.
As important milestones in the process of rapprochement between the two countries, the text points out that in April President Obama and his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro met within the framework of the Summit of the Americas in Panama City, and that representatives of the two governments carried out alternate rounds of negotiations in Washington and Havana, headed by Roberta Jacobson and Josefina Vidal.
On April 14, President Obama formally notified Congress his intention of removing Cuba from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism, in which it had been included since March 1, 1982.
On May 29, the United States withdrew Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, which, explained the State Department, "reflects our assessment that Cuba meets the statutory criteria for rescission".
The announcement of the reopening of embassies coincides with the visit of the Cuban Minister of Public Health, Roberto Morales, who received on Monday validation by the WHO and PAHO as the first country in the world to eliminate the transmission of HIV and syphilis from mother to child, indicates Notimex.
The Spanish agency EFE, in its digital portal, points out that the opening of embassies will close the stage of the reestablishment of diplomatic relations, but "not full normalization, as this requires, according to Havana, the lifting of the economic embargo imposed on the island in 1962 and the return of the land occupied by the Guantanamo Naval Base, issues difficult to resolve."
The White House official did not specify on Tuesday if there is already a date for the reopening of embassies, a ceremony Kerry is expected to attend in Havana, the Venezuelan newspaper Ultimas Noticias reported.