US-Cuba warming held up by terror-sponsor listing

Associated Press

HAVANA

American hopes of opening an embassy in Havana before presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro meet at a regional summit this week have been snarled in disputes about Cuba’s presence on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terror and U.S. diplomats’ freedom to travel and talk to ordinary Cubans without restriction, officials say.

The Summit of the Americas will be the scene of the presidents’ first face-to-face meeting since they announced Dec. 17 that they will re-establish diplomatic relations after a half-century of hostility. The Obama administration wanted the embassies reopened before the summit starts in Panama on Friday, boosting a new American policy motivated partly by a sense that isolating Cuba was causing friction with other countries in the region.

Arriving at the summit with a deal to reopen embassies in Washington and Havana would create good will for the U.S., particularly after it issued new sanctions on selected Venezuelan officials last month, prompting protests from left-leaning countries around the hemisphere.

Negotiators on both sides said they are confident they will be able to strike a deal to reopen embassies in the coming weeks but not necessarily before the summit.

“It’s not a lot of time, let’s put it that way,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told a briefing Friday when asked whether an agreement on embassies was likely before the gathering in Panama City.

Asked Monday about the latest on the embassies, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters that “when you have a country that has essentially been ostracized by the United States for five decades ... it’s going to take a little bit of time to re-establish some trust.”

“When you consider the 50-year history between our two countries, three months doesn’t seem very long,” Earnest said, referring to the December announcement.

The U.S. and Cuba have had three rounds of talks about restoring diplomatic relations. Cuba’s main demand is to be removed from the terror list, a Cold War-era designation that isolates it from much of the world financial system because banks fear repercussions from doing business with designated countries. Even Cuba’s Interests Section in Washington has lost its bank in the U.S., forcing it to deal in cash.