Cuban flag raised over embassy in U.S. as ties restored

The Cuban flag has flown proudly over Havana’s newly restored embassy as the USA and Cuba relaunched diplomatic ties but swiftly cautioned that sharp differences lingered after five decades of enmity.

The embassy openings should help both countries raise their profiles in their host nations and bring about more exchanges between journalists, academics and other groups now lawfully allowed to travel from the United States.

“But we strongly believe that we can both cooperate and coexist in a civilised way, based on the respect for these differences and the development of a constructive dialogue oriented to the wellbeing of our countries and peoples, and this continent, and the entire world”, he said.

New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, a Democratic opponent, said, “There may be a flag raising over the embassy of a dictatorship, but the real goal is a flag raising where the Cuban people are free, have their human rights respected and where we do not accept dictatorial conditions on our embassy and its people”.

The change was marked in the early hours of the day on Monday when the Cuban flag was added to the State Department’s lobby atrium.

“Cuba is not just some small island with old cars; it is a country controlled by a despotic regime that provides a safe haven and base of forward operations to Russian Federation and China in our own hemisphere”, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a Republican presidential candidate, said in a statement Monday.

In Havana, meanwhile, a carnival atmosphere reigned around the new U.S. Embassy overlooking Havana’s Malecon seaside promenade. The embassy was fully functional until the United States severed relations with Cuba in 1961.

But Kerry said the road to normalizing relations between between the two nations may be “long and complex”.

Next month the American flag will be raised at the embassy building in Cuba.

A three-man honor guard marched onto the front lawn where the Cuban flag was raised, while a band played the Cuban national anthem.

They were referring to Cuba’s revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and his brother Raul Castro, who is now the President of the Communist-run Caribb-ean island.

It remains to be seen whether the United States will lift the embargo, originally issued in 1960, or address documented human rights violations including censorship and repression that have plagued Cubans for decades. “I know no plans about President Castro to visit Washington“.

With regard to the economic embargo, Kerry recalled that only Congress may lift it and said he was confident that as the bilateral relationship develops “in these next weeks and months and years – and hopefully not too many years” – those who oppose lifting the embargo will cease to do so.

To which one might well ask: OK, so why then do we have diplomatic relations with China?

Last week, Gustavo Machin, a Cuban Foreign Ministry official, warned the US may still be attempting to remove the Cuban Communist Party from power, in spite of a public promise from President Barack Obama to move away from the policy of regime change. “We wanted the secretary to be there to oversee these important events”, a State Department official said.